June 14, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 28, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 13: Federal Minister for Water and Power Liaquat Ali Jatoi on Wednesday informed the National Assembly that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had convened a meeting on June 19 to discuss the ongoing power crisis in the country.

Responding to a call-attention notice on frequent loadshedding in all parts of Karachi, the minister said that senior officials of Wapda and his ministry would attend the meeting in which some important decisions would be taken to resolve the power crisis.

The call-attention notice was submitted by Dr Farida Ahmed, Aisha Munawar, Mohammad Hussain Mehnati and Mohammad Laeeque Khan of the MMA and Iqbal Mohammad Ali of the MQM.

Mohammad Laeeque asked the government to cancel the agreement of privatisation of the Karachi Electric Supply Company over its failure to meet the electricity demand of the city.

Mr Jatoi his ministry had nothing to do with the privatisation of the KESC as it had been done by the Privatisation Commission. He said several talks had been held with the KESC management.

Mr Jatoi said the government wanted to settle the issues with the KESC in a better way.

Akhlaque Abidi of the MQM said that the KESC issue had gone out of control. He asked the minister to provide 200MW more electricity to Karachi as the city was generating more than 60 per cent of the country’s revenue.

PML MNA Zulfiqar Dhillon called for steps to check power theft in Karachi to overcome the loadshedding problem.

Meanwhile, the issue of loadshedding also came under discussion in the Senate during the debate on the federal budget.

Later, opposition senators staged a protest sit-in outside the Parliament House building to condemn the government for failing to resolve the issue.

Speaking on the occasion, Opposition Leader in the Senate Raza Rabbani said that the PPP had opposed the government’s move to privatise the KESC. He said the PPP believed that the institutions and departments providing utilities to the people should not be privatised. He called for nationalisation of the KESC after this crisis.

Ishaq Dar of the PML-N was of the view that the present power crisis was due to the mismanagement of the government. He asked the government to quit over the failure of its energy policy.

When the opposition members were dispersing, Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Babar Ghouri also came there and said that he was with the opposition in this protest. The minister belonging to the MQM said that the people of Karachi were undergoing agonies due to power outages.

Responding to a question, he said the party members could even resign from the assemblies if the situation did not improve in the next few days.