KARACHI, Jan 30: The Pakistan Workers' Confederation has demanded of President Musharraf not to allow the proposed privatization of the KESC by selling 26 per cent shares to private investors, as it will further raise power tariff.

The general secretary of the PWC and Wapda's CBA, Khurshid Ahmed, speaking at a press conference at the Press Club said that even World Bank's president had observed that electricity rates in Pakistan were the highest in the world. Khurshid Ahmad said that privatization of electricity had miserably failed in many countries, including the US and India.

The privatization also entailed handover of the precious land owned by the KESC worth billions, which had been estimated at few crores on its book value of the previous decades, while the government had already invested Rs11 billion, and also intended to grant the rights to recover the arrears of Rs24 billion to the private investors, which, he said showed that the deal was not transparent.

The government, he said, had suspended the fundamental trade unions rights of the KESC workers in violation of the Constitution and the ILO Convention 87-98, ratified by the government, which should be restored to stakeholders.

PWC pledged its support for the KESC Action Committee's struggle against privatization, and welcomed the support extended by political parties. Other speakers were Farid Awan, Jalil Shah, Mohammad Akhlaq, Latif Mughal and Nasim Rao. -PPI