LARKANA: Senior Sindh Minister for Food and Parliamentary Affairs Nisar Ahmed Khuhro would lead a sit-in here on May 6 in protest against prolonged power loadshedding and the Centre’s denial of share in irrigation water to the province, said leaders of Pakistan Peoples Party Larkana chapter on Sunday.

A meeting of the party’s district office-bearers chaired by Larkana president Abdul Fatah Bhutto at Kennedy Market criticised the federal government for ‘deliberately’ increasing duration of loadshedding to 18 hours in Sindh.

It said the federal government had made tall claims that it had injected massive amount of power into national grid still it was punishing Sindh with prolonged outages, said Shakeel Memon, spokesman for Mr Khuhro who was also president of PPP Sindh chapter.

He said the Centre had opened Chashma-Jehlum link canal and Greater Thal canal and released large quantum of water at the cost of Sindh. Such injustice would not be tolerated, he said. The meeting was attended among others by Larkana mayor, deputy mayor and chairmen of several union councils.

HYDERABAD: PPP Sindh information secretary Aajiz Dhamrah on Sunday slammed PML-N over persisting energy crisis in Sindh and asked the party’s president Shahbaz Sharif to admit failure of the ministry of water and power.

He said at a press conference at the residence of former Sindh IGP Ghulam Hyder Jamali that one felt sick when the disqualified prime minister and incompetent federal government kept claiming unashamedly on TV channels that they had fulfilled the promise of ending energy crisis.

“I am asking former premier Nawaz Sharif, PML-N chief Shahbaz Sharif and puppet prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi who had claimed the end of loadshedding what is happening in Sindh now if it is not loadshedding,” he said.

He said that PML-N was punishing Sindh for its worst defeat in 2013 polls. Loadshedding had not ended anywhere in the country, he said.

He said that he had asked ministry of water and power three years back as Senator to inform him about “number of feeders province-wise and the loadshedding being carried out from each of them?”

After much reluctance the ministry shared a 100-page document with him before his retirement from Senate, which said that officially there was two-hour loadshedding in Punjab, zero hours in the district of PML-N leader Abid Sher Ali and up to 19-hour loadshedding in Sindh and Balochistan, he said.

He said the ministry blamed people of Sindh for not paying bills while Hesco kept issuing detection and inflated bills and meter readers did not bother to make house to house visits to note readings.

Mr Dhamrah said that federal minister for power Awais Ahmed Leghari must admit that there was no mechanism for dealing with detection and inflated bills. Sindh chief minister and provincial ministers had staged protests against loadshedding in past as well but the Centre did not move into action.

He said that protests against loadshedding were being held across Sindh which might create law and order situation. Sindh chief minister had written a letter to the federal government cautioning the deferral government about it and also invited all political parties to join a sit-in outside Prime Minister’s House in Islamabad in protest against unending outages.

He said that PPP was not doing politics over loadshedding. The Sindh government had generated 104 megawatts of electricity in Nooriabad and offered it to Hesco but it refused to buy it, forcing Sindh government to form a private transmission company and sell the same to K-Electric, he said.

Mr Dhamrah appealed to Supreme Court-appointed commission on water quality and drainage in Sindh to ask Punjab not to release contaminated water into Indus river.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2018