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Summary The USAID has sponsored a study tour for the commercial officials of Pak energy sector.
A group of senior commercial operations and customer service officials from Pakistan’s power distribution companies (DISCOs) will travel to the UAE from Saturday for six days to visit the utilities in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.This exchange tour is organised by the US government to strengthen commercial operations and customer service functions at DISCOs. This group would leave for UAE from November 10 to November 16.“The U.S. Government is committed to assist the Government of Pakistan in improving the power distribution system in the country,” said Matt Lannon, Energy Office Representative at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission to Pakistan. “We work with public sector power distribution companies to improve their operations, reduce losses, and ultimately, to make sure that consumers have a more reliable supply of power.”During their exchange visit to the UAE, DISCO managers have an opportunity to observe operations at several well-run power utilities. The program will include presentations, site visits, and roundtable discussions to address specific topics related to customer service and commercial management at distribution companies.The USAID under its Power Distribution Program has previously conducted five exchange programs to Turkey, South Africa, USA and Australia. Approximately 12 DISCO managers were selected for each exchange program.These managers were nominated by IESCO (Islamabad), MEPCO (Multan), GEPCO (Gujranwala), HESCO (Hyderabad), LESCO (Lahore), PESCO (Peshawar), FESCO (Faisalabad), QESCO (Quetta) and SEPCO (Sukkur). The main focus of the program in Turkey was Commercial, Financial and Customer Information Systems, and for South Africa the Program focused on Engineering, Planning and Operations.The US exchange focused on HR and Change Management and the visit to Australia focused on Distribution Engineering and Management.Recently the Exchange Program conducted in the US was focused on Distribution Systems Design and Operations. During these visits the delegates were given presentations, site visits were conducted and roundtable discussions held to address specific topics in DISCOs, such as engineering planning an designing, loss reduction initiatives, business plans and models, HR practices and customer service enhancements.The four and half year USAID Power Distribution Program was announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009 as one of the US government’s efforts to support Pakistan’s energy system.
