Pakistani Energy Shortages Creates Unemployment

Pakistan’s ongoing energy crisis is impacting the labor market, causing hundreds of thousands of people to lose their jobs.

According to Samar Mubarakmand, a Science and Technology, Planning Commission member, the country’s chronic energy shortages have affected more than 25,000 industrial enterprises and more than 400,000 people are now unemployed now because of the country’s chronic energy shortages.

Addressing the Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mubarakmand commented that the issue was a pressing one requiring immediate resolution, unable to wait for a few years until the government could resolve it and that the capital cost should be met by the private sector and the country’s raw energy material assets should be used, the News Online reported.

In addressing the country’s indigenous energy assets Mubarakmand specifically noted that the production of electricity and gas at the country’s Thar coal fields was significant and should be expanded.

Mubarakmand has repeatedly boosted the potential of Pakistan's Thar coal reserves, noting that the underground coal seams spreading over 9,600 square kilometers in Sindh were 100 times greater in value than the petroleum reserves existing in oil producing countries., while comparing it to China, where there are vast coal reserves and 60 percent of power generation there is based on coal.

By. Joao Peixe, Deputy Editor OilPrice.com