HYDERABAD, March 26: The Wapda Hydro Electric Central Labour Union on Monday appealed to the president, prime minister and the chairman of Wapda to drop the proposal for ‘unnecessarily’ privatising Jamshoro thermal power station, which the union said was running in total profit.

Labour leader Mohammad Sajan Panhwar, who chaired a meeting of the administration committee of labour unions of all the power stations of Wapda at Jamshoro power station, said that the workers would never accept the power station’s privatisation.

Mr Panhwar demanded end to victimisation of workers at Guddu thermal power station and resolution of their problems through dialogue.

He said that it was beyond comprehension why the federal government was bent on disposing of profitable enterprises one after another and said in answer to his own question that the government was in fact acting on the diktats of the World Bank and IMF and was planning to dispose of the power station on the false pretext that Wapda was incurring huge losses.

He claimed that Wapda could easily be turned around and made a profitable organisation if the government organisations cleared Rs1.8 trillion they owed to the authority and KESC.

He said that the Jamshoro station had been officially declared as the most productive electricity producing station still it was being privatised.

The fault did not lie with Wapda but with the wrong policies of rulers, he said and argued that power tariff would shoot once the station was privatised.

Mr Panhwar said that Wapda was already paying billions of rupees to the IPPs (Independent Power Producers) for power at the rate of 70 paisas per unit. If Jamshoro station was privatised it would render electricity even more costly, he said.

He said that the privatisation of Habib Bank, Steel Mills, KESC and PTCL had already proved that the rulers had their own vested interests in disposing of national enterprises.