Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Chairman Pakistan People's Party has accused the federal government of deliberately creating electricity crisis to victimise the people and divert their attention from the Panama Leaks and other misdeeds of the Sharif government in the whole country, especially in Sindh and its capital city Karachi.
In a press statement issued on Tuesday, the PPP Chairman said that country's electricity need for the country was 23,700MW while the total power generation capacity was 23,600MW thus practically there was a meagre shortfall of just 100MW. "But the Federal government and its electric companies were inflicted an artificial shortfall of 7,000mw upon the people during the severe heatwave the country is undergoing nowadays," he added.
He said that PML-N government paid hundreds of billions rupees circular debt and, in some cases, the extra payments were made to the IPPs but still it was imposed an artificial load-shedding on the consumers. Bilawal Bhutto said that providing electricity is a state function as per our Constitution and the world over it remains the same but the PML-N government was targeting the people with unannounced load-shedding and mock power breakdowns, which should be vehemently condemned by every Pakistani.
He further said the Sindh province was producing surplus electricity but its length and breadth have been subjected to unbearable load-shedding by PML-N government. He condemned the attitude of K-Electric, which means only minting money and fleecing the people of Karachi without supplying electricity. "K-Electric has capacity 1,800mw and 1,000MW supply from other resources including IPPs and Wapda. But it generates only 400MW through gas-fired power plants and has practically shut down its furnace oil power plants to save billions of rupees in profits while Karachiites suffer under fire-spitting son," he added.
Bilawal said that old areas of Karachi, including Lyari, Kharadar, Keamari and other poor localities are specially targeted with 8-12 hours of load-shedding. Residents of Lyari were even compelled to hold a Dharna outside K-Electric office on Monday against the discriminatory attitude of the authorities concerned. PPP Chairman said he was informed that K-Electric has switching to use of silver cables instead of copper, which don't pick much load thus multiplying the electricity crisis. He also warned K-Electric, HESCO and SEPCO to stop issuing over-billing to the consumers and improve their performance without any delay. Otherwise, the people won't tolerate this victimisation and come out on roads against them.