June 10, 2006	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 13, 1427

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

ISLAMABAD, June 9: The opposition has decided to requisition a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Water and Power to discuss the privatisation of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) in reference with the ongoing power crisis in the city.

Speaking at a news conference at the Parliament House on Friday, People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) senators Raza Rabbani and Enver Baig said the power crisis in Karachi had been caused by the government’s ‘wrong decision’ of privatising the KESC.

He said it had been announced soon after the sell-off that $400 million would be spent on the improvement of KESC’s infrastructure, but there was no progress on that account.

The senators said that shopkeepers in Karachi had been ordered to close down at 7 in the evening.

Criticising the restriction, they called upon the government to withdraw the decision.

Mr Rabbani alleged that the power crisis had been deliberately created to cripple the economy of Karachi and said his party was opposed to selling foreigners the institutions that were considered to be the economic lifeline of the country.

He said Karachi was the biggest industrialist city of the country and due to loadshedding industrialists there had already expressed doubts about meeting the export target.

Pakistan, he charged, was being made a consumer market at the behest of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Mr Rabbani said that he along with three other opposition senators had moved an adjournment motion to the Senate secretariat on the issue and the motion had been referred to the standing committee. He identified other movers as Dr Safdar Abbasi, Ishaq Dar and Rukhsana Zuberi.