05 February 2005	Saturday	25 Zilhaj 1425

KARACHI, Feb 4: Speakers at a meeting on Friday condemned the selling of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation at a fraction of its actual price, demanding that the decision be withdrawn.

They were speaking to a large number of KESC workers gathered at a hunger strike camp organized at the Karachi Press Club to protest against the power utility's privatization. Two leaders - Akhlaq Khan and Usman Baloch -- started their hunger strike until death from Friday.

The protesters were also chanting slogans against the cancellation of the KESC's privatization, restoration of trade union activities, etc. Terming it a government conspiracy, which according to them was working on the directives of international financial institutions against the masses, they said their fears had come true, as the bid of a multinational company had been accepted for the KESC.

They said the KESC was a sensitive organization, which provided electricity to sensitive installations etc, all of which would now become vulnerable. They claimed that the power utility had been given to a favourite party at around 20 per cent of its actual worth.

They said it was a national loss that the KESC had been sold at a price of Rs1.65 per share, which translated to Rs16.5 billion (equivalent to $267 million) while its per share price in the Karachi Stock Exchange was quoted at around Rs8.

The KESC workers' leaders said it was an accepted phenomenon that the management shares were always sold at a many times higher value than the price at which normal shares was available on the stock market. But, here the management shares were sold at just 1/5th the price of normal shares.

They said that the real estate of the KESC was scattered throughout the city, and that many pieces of its land had now come in the city centre and were worth billions of rupees.

They warned that if the private party, buying the utility, enhanced the tariff or resorted to retrenchment of workers, they would resort to direct action, whereby all responsibility of any untoward incident would rest with the government.

This government, they said had gone ahead and accepted the bid of a consortium of multinational companies - Kanooz Al-Watan of Saudi Arabia and Germany's electric equipment manufacturing giant, Siemens AG - despite being opposed by every major political party of the country, the masses and workers. They said enhancement in tariffs would affect every power consumer be it a household subscriber or an industrialist.