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Load-shedding to be reduced by half 'soon'

Amidst media reports that the 12-14 hours of daily power outage that the country is currently facing might further increase, a top government official has said that it will instead be reduced by half from February 26. Similarly, the government official also assured that the pro-longed load-shedding hours will be done away with for good in the next 5 years time.

Briefing the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Sunday morning, Secretary at the Ministry for Water Resources (MoWR) Shankar Koirala informed that the transmission line within Nepal and that linking to India (for importing electricity from India) which had been destroyed during last year's flood will be repaired by February 19, leading to a significant reduction in the daily power cuts or load-shedding.

Koirala also informed the Committee that 60 Mega Watt of electricity will be imported from India once the transmission line washed away by Koshi floods in Katihar is repaired.

He told the Committee that MoWR is about to initiate action against companies that have taken the license for building hydropower project long time back but are yet to start it.

In his address to the nation few weeks ago, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal had said that the government will revoke the licenses of companies that have notstarted work on their hydropower project even six months after taking the license.

Similarly, Uttar Kumar Shrestha, acting director of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), said that Nepal will be a "load-shedding free country" after five years.

Admitting that the current load-shedding regime is "unimaginable", Shrestha backed up his claims by saying that 510 MW of electricity will be produced by the government, 250 MW by the private sector and 200-300 MW will be imported from India for this purpose.

Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) is currently faced with unanticipated problem which might force it to increase the load shedding hours again. According to reports, the second largest private sector power house Bhotekoshi has stopped its production from Thursday thanks to technical problems and another private sector power house Indrawati has stopped prodution thanks to protests from locals from Friday. This results in the reduction of 17 MW power to the National grid of NEA. nepalnews.com ag Feb 08 09