LAHORE, May 17: Former chief justice of Pakistan and Electric Power Forum president Nasim Hasan Shah has described the government decision to privatize Wapda’s power distribution companies as suicidal and called for formation of a joint front for resistance against its implementation.

Speaking at a seminar on ‘High Priced Electricity’ organized by the Forum at the Bakhtiar Labour Hall here on Friday, Mr Shah said people should oppose the privatization of the distribution companies vehemently as it would eventually destroy the national economy.

He said the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had forced the government to take the wrong decision. They were notorious for destroying the economies of the countries acting on their advice.

Justice Shah said the implementation of the decision would benefit the private power companies but trigger disputes on electricity tariffs between regions and provinces.

Wapda former chairman Lt-Gen Zahid Ali Akbar (retired) said the present system of uniform power tariff for the whole of the country would be dispensed with following the privatization of distribution companies. Every district would have its own power tariff suiting the interests of the private power distributor.

He said he had visited England, Indonesia, Malaysia, Europe, central America and the Philippines to study the impact of privatization of power generation and distribution. Electricity rates had increased wherever the system was privatized. The rates in England, however, reduced during the first six months after the privatization but almost doubled afterwards.

He said the privatization of distribution companies would not only result in enforcement of different power tariffs in different parts of the country but also deprive the poor consumers of the facilities like the life line tariff under which the lowest rates were charged for the first 50 units. Electricity would not be available at subsidized rates for the agriculture sector either.

He said the government instead of implementing the decision in a hurry, the government should implement it in one area on experimental basis to know the results in case it was under enormous pressure to go ahead with it.

Pakistan Engineering Congress and Wapda Engineers Association president Engineer Chaudhry Abdur Rashid said the decision could not be that of a Wapda engineer because power rates had shot up wherever it had been done. He said Wapda engineers had opposed the decision to purchase power from the private companies in the past as well.

He said the purchase of the power from the IPPs had deprived Wapda of its annual profit of Rs8 billion to Rs9 billion. Wapda engineers offered to purchase the Kot Addu power station but were informed that the buyer had been selected already. The buyer paid the price of the powerhouse within a year from the proceeds of the sales. Wapda engineers and employees were once again ready to buy the Faisalabad Electricity Supply Company in case the government had not been left with any other option except its privatization.

He said privatization of distribution companies was a World Bank and IMF conspiracy against the consumers.

Mr Rashid said the water storage capacity of the country had not been increased by a single drop since 1973. The people could do without power but survival without water was not possible. But nobody had been paying attention to the problem of water shortage and the entire attention had been focussed on distribution companies privatization on the dictates of foreigners.

Electric Power Forum secretary general Salman Najeeb said Wapda had been weakened systematically by compelling it to purchase electricity from the IPPs at high prices and dividing it into 13 companies. It had been forced to spend Rs50 billion per annum — 50 per cent of its revenue — on the purchase of 30 per cent of power required by it for distribution from the IPPs.

He said Wapda electricity purchase from the IPPs had increased to 22 billion units against its requirement of 58 billion units this year. It would have to spend Rs102 billion — 60 per cent of its revenue — for the purpose. This had created a black hole in the national economy in the name of restructuring and corporatization.

He said India had not allowed the purchase of more than 5 per cent of the required power from the IPPs. But IPPs share in Wapda had been reduced to only 17 per cent from 25 per cent.

He said the country was getting only $1 billion to $2 billion per annum from the 13 MAF Indus Basin water but had suffered a loss of $70 billion due to delay in the construction of the Kalabagh dam with a 7 MAF storage capacity.

Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists president I. H. Raashed said the government should nationalize the IPPs instead of allowing the private profit brokers destroy a national organization through privatization of its power distribution companies.

He said privatization of profit earning Faisalabad, Lahore and Gujranwala distribution companies would deepen the financial crisis being faced by Wapda as the remaining companies were incurring losses.

He said Wapda had developed and expanded its operations satisfactorily because the government did not interfere in its affairs. It was not independent any longer. The government, which was interfering in its affairs at the behest of the World Bank and the IMF, had forgotten that 5,000 industrial units in the country were already closed due to high operation costs. More units would close down when the power supply rate would jump to Rs15 per unit for domestic consumers and Rs30 per unit for commercial consumers after privatization of distribution companies.

Pakistan Wapda Hydro-Electric Central Labour Union secretary general Khurshid Ahmad, said Wapda would have to pay Rs115 billion of its Rs195 billion revenue to the IPPs this year. It would spend Rs40 billion on the purchase of fuel, Rs16 billion on operations and maintenance, Rs6 billion on payment of hydel power royalty to the NWFP and Rs35 billion on payment of sales tax and service of loans this year.