ISLAMABAD: Chairman of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Finance Saleem Mandviwalla has said that PPP will raise objection in the upper house of parliament over the appointment of Sheikh Imranul Haque as managing director of Pakistan State Oil (PSO).

In a statement issued here on Monday, Mr Mandiwalla accused the government of ignoring a conflict of interest while making the appointment because Mr Haque had been taken from a company which had already been in the business of LNG’s import.

Terming it a non-transparent appointment, the senator alleged that the government had appointed Mr Haque to finalise the LNG deal and hide suspicious or corrupt practice in the deal.

He accused the government of pressurising officials to sign what he called the suspicious LNG import agreement. In the process, he added, the government had fired the managing director of the Sui Northern Gas Company Limited (SNGPL) because he had refused to sign the LNG deal.

Mr Mandiwalla alleged that the government wanted to sell national assets to please the World Bank and IMF.

He said that World Bank and other such agencies had provided a loan of $54 million to the government for privatisation of national strategic institutions. “The Privatisation Commission is doing everything on its own without giving any information to parliament,” he added.

The PPP senator said the privatisation policy of the government had failed because questions were being raised over transparency of transactions. The Senate committee had reservations over the privatisation of Heavy Electrical Complex, he added.

He said the government had not followed the Corporate Governance Rules and was instead promoting a culture of favouritism. The employees of Faisalabad Electric Supply Company were protesting against its privatisation and the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had rejected the privatisation of Peshawar Electric Supply Company, he added.

The senator said the PPP would resist the government’s moves to privatise state-owned enterprises without following rules.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2015

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