LARKANA: In protest against prolonged power outage, low pressure of natural gas and discontinuing of the stop of Bolan Mail at the Shahnawaz Bhutto railway station, a complete shutterdown strike was observed in Naudero on Thursday on the call of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

A large number of people also stopped the Peshawar-bound Khushhal Khan Khattak Express at the Shahnawaz Bhutto railway station.

Hundreds of protesters carrying banners and placards assembled outside the local municipal office in Naudero. Ratodero taluka PPP president Aijaz Leghari, former central convener of MRD Hussain Bakhsh Narejo, Khalid Memon and Manzoor Mangi led the protesters. Different literary and political personalities also endorsed the call and joined the protest.

Raising slogans against the federal minister of state for water and power, the protesters marched on the main roads of the town carrying his effigy on a donkey.

The angry protesters sat on the railway tracks and stopped Khushhal Khan Khattak Express near the Shahnawaz Bhutto railway station. However, after two hours, they allowed the train to continue its onward journey. They accused the railway authorities of abandoning the stop of Bolan Mail at this station.

After that they staged a sit-in on the Naudero-bypass road while raising slogans and suspended the vehicular traffic on Larkana and Sukkur routes. Talking to reporters at the by-pass road, their leaders alleged that Federal Minister Abid Sher Ali had a personal grudge against Naudero as the town of Benazir Bhutto was facing a 22-hours power outage.

They accused the minister of victimizing the residents on the pretext of power theft, saying that the personnel of power companies were themselves involved in power theft. The actual subscribers had been made the scapegoat, they said.

Currently, they said, the people of Naudero were facing two problems— electricity loadshedding and drastically reduced pressure of natural gas.

They called for reverting to the original outage timing of six to eight hours and enhancing pressure of the gas along with restoring the stop of Bolan Mail at the Shahnawaz Bhutto railway station which earned about Rs300,000 business per month.

If their voice remained unheard, they would protest and encircle local power grid station, they said.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2015

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