Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan’s third-most populous province, has decided to initiate a work-from-home policy on Fridays in a bid to save fuel and electricity and avoid nationwide blackouts amid the country’s deepening economic and energy crisis.
The measure has been announced to save fuel and electricity, Taimur Khan Jhagra, the finance minister of the northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, said in a video post on Twitter.
“The work-from-home policy was inspired by the rising prices of electricity and oil,” the finance minister of KPK, Taimur Khan Jhagra, told VOA on Tuesday. He spoke a day after presenting the budget to the provincial assembly in Peshawar, the provincial capital.
The step follows the federal government’s earlier decision of ending Saturday as a work-day and cutting the volume of fuel by 40% allocated to its employees.
“In a government of 600,000 people, if half of them can actually work from home, the fuel savings and the electricity savings we believe will amount to between 2 and 5 billion rupees ($1=205 rupees) a year, which for a government like ours is a huge saving,” Jhagra noted.
He further argued that various private sectors worldwide are incorporating work-from-home in their own respective ways, and his government has taken the initiative to bring in the policy in the public sector to cope with growing financial and energy challenges.
Pakistan is facing a shortfall of 7,000 megawatts in its electricity generation. The country has an installed capacity of 35,000 megawatts, and demand during the summer season peaks at 27,000 megawatts.
The country’s energy crisis is escalating because of a delay in securing an International Monetary Fund bailout amid rising global oil prices.
The provincial minister explained that government departments will identify staff that actually do need to work on Friday, but crucial services such as the hospitals, police, and schools will continue to run beyond four days a week.