KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly on Monday echoed with the demands of lodging an FIR against the power utility, K-Electric, and payment of compensation to the heirs of over 200 people who perished in the heatwave over the past couple of days.

The occasion was offering Fateha for the departed souls when the house was not in session, which often concludes within minutes, but it lasted an hour as the lawmakers expressing the miseries being faced by the people took K-Electric to task saying that the company that was minting millions of rupees even failed to honour the commitment that there would be no loadshedding at Sahar and Iftar during Ramazan.

Leader of the opposition Khwaja Izharul Hassan said the Sindh government ought to summon the KE and exercise its authority. But Finance Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that a strong-worded resolution on the electricity issue would be tabled in the house after the budget discussion and, if needed, a sit-in against the power woes would be staged in Islamabad.

The discussion was initiated by Naheed Begum of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which was endorsed by Dr Sohrab Sarki, Shamim Mumtaz of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Khurram Sherzaman of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf who demanded an FIR be lodged against KE as well as the Sindh government for their failure to reduce people’s sufferings.

Khairunnisa Mughal said the PML-N leadership misguided the people promising to resolve the issue within six months. PPP lawmaker Lal Chand Ukrani said an FIR be lodged against Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali.

Nusrat Sehar Abbasi of the PML-F said the people were braving the heatwave not only in Karachi but also in Hyderabad, Sukkur and other parts of Sindh.

Sorath Thebo of the PML-N said devastation was the result of climate change due to deforestation on a massive scale.

MQM lawmaker Mohammad Hussain said that hundreds of lives were lost in Karachi during the past two days. It was not a usual event but none of the federal and Sindh governments even announced mourning over the deaths, he said. If KE was responsible, the health department could not absolve from the responsibility either which failed to educate the masses about the precautionary measures, he said.

The leader of the opposition said that the death toll would be even higher that would be known only when reports from other districts and Thar reached the media. He said he and his other colleagues MPAs had approached KE officials and asked them to go along with them instead issuing instructions from their air-conditioned rooms. The MQM lawmakers went in KE vehicles to various places to get the faults removed, as the KE employees were avoiding to visit the places fearing mob attacks, he said.

Holding the federal and provincial governments equally responsible for the deaths, he said the government should have taken precautionary measures in the wake of weather forecast and the reports from India where 1,800 people had died in last month heatwave.

Khwaja Izharul Hassan said he visited the KE complaint centre 118 along with Syed Faisal Sabzwari on Sunday. There were 6,000 complaints pending, he said, adding that he and his colleagues tried to contact all the ministers but the phones of all other ministers except Syed Murad Ali Shah were off.

He suggested to Deputy Speaker Syeda Shehla Raza, who called the house in order at 11:15am despite the presence of only 27 lawmakers in the house, to order to switch off the air-condition unit of the assembly hall for an hour as a token of solidarity with the families of over 250 people who died in the heatwave.

Health Minister Dr Jam Mehtab Dahar said necessary measures had been taken 20 days back in view of the expected weather and heat stroke incidents in all hospitals of the province and necessary medicines were made available for treatment. He claimed that many lives were saved and the patients were provided treatment at government hospitals.

Finance minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that institutions’ performance was known at the time of emergency. The federal government said it was not only Karachi but the entire country was facing loadshedding, he said. He added that he had contacted Hesco and Sepco which informed him that they were getting reduced load from the federal government.

He said that if the federal government was not prepared to discharge its responsibility, we had to consider other options. Even if a sit-in was required in Islamabad to press the federal government to resolve the issue, the elected representatives of the people were prepared to go for it, he said.

Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2015

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