News
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Allies grill govt over prolonged outagesISLAMABAD: The coalition parties, including ANP and MQM, on Monday burst out at the government for its apathy over prolonged load shedding in Ramazan, and held the government’s inefficiency, corruption and nepotism responsible for the situation, during Monday’s session of the Senate.
ANP legislators walked out over power outages in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the rest of the country. “Our people are suffering from load shedding. Motorway and many other roads have been blocked. People are protesting but nobody is here to listen,” ANP’s Zahid Khan said and walked out along with his party members.
MQM’s Tahir Mashhadi also blasted the government over prolonged blackouts. Most of the country is facing around 18 hours of load shedding. Since formation of the current government, the power tariff has been increased by 140 percent. He also said the main cause of prolonged load shedding was circular debt and no one was willing to pay the amount. He also said a federal minister who had failed to run the Water and Power Ministry had been made the country’s prime minister. Supporting Mashhadi, opposition leader Ishaq Dar said being a coalition partner, the MQM was also responsible for this menace. He asked the party to get their party chief’s stance on power outages.
PML-N’s Hamza said the government had meted out stepmotherly treatment to Punjab and heavy load shedding was being carried out there. Punjab confronted the most load shedding despite the fact that losses and power theft were lowest here. He suggested allied parties to part ways with the government to compel it to announce general elections. Mir Hasil Bezinjo said legislators from Balochistan had stopped talking about power because they did not get any. He said the government itself framed charges against Raja Pervez Ashraf when he was a federal minister, in rental power plants case, but he regretted that the same person was made prime minister. He suggested the government call an all-parties conference and announce schedule for next elections. JUI-F’s Haji Ghulam Ali said Peshawar-Islamabad Motorway was blocked by protesters over load shedding. He deplored that load shedding was being carried out even during sehr and iftar despite claims against it. The legislators also expressed dissatisfaction over absence of the water and power minister. Senate Chairman Nayyar Hussan Bokhari directed Leader of the House Jehangir Badr to ensure availability of the minister next time, otherwise he will summon the WAPDA secretary in the next time session. ijaz kakakhel
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk