RAWALPINDI, Feb 2: Hundreds of employees of Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) on Wednesday staged a rally in front of Rawalpindi Press Club to protest against the proposed privatization of public utilities , particularly various units of the authority.

The rally was organized by the People's Rights Movement (PRM) and the All Pakistan Federation of Trade Unions (AFTU) to express solidarity with 9,000 workers of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation (KESC) who will face the adverse consequences of the corporation's privatisation.

The Privatisation Commission has announced that initial bidding for the corporation will take place on February 4th. Speaking to the participants of the rally, Asim Sajjad of PRM said all over the world the state had started handing control of public utilities over to the private sector.

This definitive shift, he said, was being propagated by the international financial institutions (IFIs) and multinational capital at large. The effects of this free market fundamentalism, he further said, would appear in shape of the workers losing their jobs and the working class consumers being deprived of basic utilities.

Akram Bunda of the AFTU said it was essential that the working class came together to resist this onslaught of capitalist expansion.He said the unprecedented waves of popular protest in Latin America against IFIs had proved that the working class unity was possible and that this unity could stand up against the dictates of imperialism and capitalism.

He said it was extremely important for the workers and political activists of Rawalpindi and Islamabad to protest against the privatization of KESC. Zafarullah Niazi from Wapda pointed out that if Wapda was privatized in parts, as the government was envisaging, thousands of workers will be laid off. He said such an eventuality could not be allowed to come to pass and therefore it was imperative that the privatization process be stopped.