GUJRAT: Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid parliamentary leader in the National Assembly Pervaiz Elahi says the energy crisis in Punjab will persist even if electricity generation increases as the PML-N leadership had surrendered the province’s rights in the 2009 NFC Award only to earn third term.

Speaking to Dawn on Eid day at his Zahoor Elahi house, he said Punjab always needed extra share in electricity and gas due to its population but Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif signed a deal and withdrew Punjab’s share for his personal gains.

He said it was due to an agreement that Punjab had been getting less electricity and gas that had resulted in the industrial crisis as textile, leather, fan, pottery, ceramics and other sectors had been starved of fuel and thousands of people had been rendered jobless.

“Sindh is getting gas for five days a week and the electricity quota of Sindh’s industrial sector is better than that of Punjab,” said the former Punjab chief minister.

Says PML-N leaders sold province’s rights

He revealed that PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari had offered to the textile industry owners of Faisalabad to shift their units to Sindh and they were pondering the option.

He said as a deputy prime minister and federal minister for industries, he had taken up the issue of less share of gas to Punjab industry with the PPP-led coalition government of which his party also was a part but he was astonished when the then petroleum minister, Dr Asim Hussain, told him that the ministry could not do so under the existing formula agreed upon by Shahbaz Sharif.

Pervaiz Elahi said when he was the Punjab chief minister in 2005-06, Pervez Musharraf asked him to agree on the formula of “first right on resources of the province that produces (gas and energy)” but he stood firm and safeguarded Punjab’s rights.

“I always replied that Punjab can agree on that formula if other provinces accept Kalabagh dam,” he said. He claimed that he had also assured the other provinces that Punjab would not get any share out of the water reservoirs of the KBD as its only interest in the dam was enhancement of the power generation.

He said the PML-N leadership had “sold the rights of Punjab to benefit from the 18th amendment” that lifted the ban on the third term in the prime ministerial office and facilitated Nawaz Sharif.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2014