LAHORE: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Industries Minister Shaukat Yousafzai on Thursday lambasted state minister Abid Sher Ali by calling him a ‘patient of mental disorder’ for continuously accusing the province of power theft.

The minister said the prime minister should himself get Abid Sher Ali’s “meter” repaired, otherwise the PTI would get him admitted to a mental hospital.

He also invited Mr Ali to KP to root out power theft in the province.

The state minister should also speak about the power theft in Punjab and Sindh, Mr Yousafzai said at a Meet-the-Press event organised by the Lahore Press Club on Thursday. He said Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had claimed to end loadshedding in three to six months but he had failed to produce even a single megawatt of electricity.

He said the PTI had started producing electricity as well as gas and was giving these commodities to the federal government.

“The federal government is discriminating against the KP by imposing 18 to 20 hours loadshedding (on the province),” he observed.

The minister said Wapda was the biggest “power thief” and added that the KP was entitled to receiving Rs47 billion annually as royalty. He said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should ensure the payment of royalty to KP so that it may generate more power.

Mr Yousafzai said the PTI’s forward bloc was neither demanding ministries nor going to join any other party. He said the PTI was a democratic party and its members had the right to speak about their grievances.

He said the so-called war against terrorism could not be won even after fighting for 100 years. “Dialogue is the only path to peace,” he added. Saying the PTI was for a dialogue with the Taliban, he stressed the federal government should show seriousness in holding ‘peace dialogue’.

Mr Yousafzai said the Awami National Party (ANP) had in the past “sold” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for $47 billion and the province was declared no-go area. “Now, the game of dollars in this territory (KP) be stopped,” he said.

He said the PTI government did exemplary development works in the province and provided the KP people free medical services, including angiography, angioplasty, kidney transplant, anti-hepatitis injections etc, besides setting up an insulin bank there.

He said the federal government did not make any serious efforts to eliminate polio from the KP but the PTI secured polio-free status for Peshawar from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The minister also mentioned education reforms, including uniform curriculum from Class-I to X KP students. He said the PTI also introduced ‘Right to Service’ system to end Patwari culture, besides the Right to Information Act for the public.

LPC President Arshad Ansari and senior governing body member Khwaja Naseer Ahmad were present on the occasion.