KOHAT/SWABI: The Pakistan Wapda Hydro-Electric Union on Monday protested the government plan to privatise the profit-earning power distribution companies instead of bringing the promised reforms in the organisations to further improve their performance.

Addressing a protest rally in Kohat, union’s provincial chairman Younis Shah and Kohat division chairman Daud lamented that earlier the government had created crises of wheat, flour, sugar and petroleum in the country, and now it was regularly increasing the electricity tariff.

They condemned the plan to privatise Iesco and Pesco and resolved to resist the measure aimed at selling the distribution companies at ‘throwaway rates’ to pay off the IMF loan, thus compromising the interests of consumers and employees. They said once privatised the companies would immediately raise power tariffs and lay off the workers.

The hydro-electric union leaders said the privatisation plan was in conflict with the claims of the prime minister to bring positive reforms in the government organisations.

They said the poor had been crushed under the skyrocketing price hike but the ‘incompetent’ government was making decisions against the people’s interests.

They said no government in the past touched the topic of Wapda privatisation, but the PTI government was hell-bent on ‘selling’ the golden egg which earned billions of rupees monthly for it.

They demanded that the government fill the vacant posts in the companies, give due rights to the employees and cancel the privatisation plan. They threatened that if their demands were not met they would march on Islamabad.

In Swabi, the Pesco employees staged a demonstration against the government’s decision to privitise the company.

They gathered at the Wapda head office in the district headquarters and chanted slogans against the government. All the Pesco offices in the district remained closed during the entire day.

Saeed Ahmad, circle chairman of Pakistan Wapda Hydro-Electric Union, said instead of giving jobs to people the government had started a campaign to snatch sources of livelihood from them.

Azad Quraish, chairman of the union’s Topi circle, said successive governments had made similar efforts but the Wapda workers foiled them and the PTI government would meet the same fate.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2021