SUKKUR, Oct 24: Awami Muslim League chief Shaikh Rashid Ahmed has dismissed complaints about shortage of power as wrong and claimed that the government has no money to pay independent power producers, whose bill has now reached Rs30 billion.

Mr Ahmed said at a public meeting in Mohammad bin Qasim Park here that a ‘hurricane’ of inflation was in the making and would hit the poor during next couple of months.

He said that the reason behind the

US dollar’s rise to Rs80 from Rs50 was that the politicians had bank accounts in foreign countries.

He called President Asif Ali Zardari a civilian dictator and said that he had become the president due to inflexible stance taken by Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif, who just wanted to rid the country of military dictator.

He said that though he desired to see the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government complete its tenure but it had miserably failed to solve people’s problems.

About controversy over restoration of deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, he said that he had always said that the deposed chief justice would never be restored “because three dead bodies can’t be buried in a single grave”.

Referring to past governments of PPP, he said that the PPP had a tendency to lose its grip on power after coming into power and resultantly had to go home within 12 to 24 months.

He said that the government should raise salaries of government servants in accordance with price hike. Maintenance of law and order in Fata was almost impossible until the US forces were present in Afghanistan, he said.