Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Sindh chapter General Secretary Senator Taj Haider has expressed serious reservations over the reports that the federal government wants to settle 37 billion gas bills of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) by giving land of the Steel Mills to Sui Southern Gas Company.
He said the land of PSM belongs to the Sindh government and was leased out to PSM for setting up the industrial plants and allied facilities of PSM. If PSM does not want to utilize the land for the specified purpose then the land shall automatically revert to the Sindh government. Land belonging to the Sindh government could not be used or sold for settling liabilities between two federal government departments and its ultimate sale for purposes other than specified.
Senator Haider said that the federal government is only setting up an illegal precedent for privatisation of PSM and selling off its precious land, which is totally unacceptable. The days of such 'smart' conspiracies have since long gone as everyone might see through the nefarious plan. The PSM breaks even at meeting 70 percent of its production capacity. Its production has been going up and has reached 65 percent. It is at this point that instead of providing it all possible support to PSM to further increase its production to the optimum possible level the gas supply is disconnected and production halted. Even if the gas supply is resumed the furnaces shall take a long time to come to the previous production levels. Disconnection of gas supply on the plea of non-payment and settling the bills through sale of land is nothing but a ploy to destroy the PSM and privatise it at throw away prices.-PR
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