KARACHI, Feb 3: Speakers at a meeting of workers on Thursday, condemning the proposed privatization of the KESC, demanded that the process be stopped immediately.

The meeting was organized by the People's Labour Union of the Karachi Water and Seweage Board.

The speakers urged the workers of all public and private sector organizations to resist the privatization policy because the government would eventually sell off all the organizations one after the other.

They said that the private owner of the KESC would definitely raise the tariff and make all consumers, domestic or industrial, to suffer. The industrialist, they believed, would no more be able to compete in the market due to the higher cost of their produce. Even employees might face retrenchment on a big scale in the new owners' bid to reduce the expenditure.

They alleged that the government was privatizing the public utility organizations on the directives of the international financial institutions. They feared that the water board might also be privatized if resistance was not mounted against the privatization of the KESC.

They urged politicians, workers, public representatives and people from all walks of live to join hands in order to foil the government's plot of selling off the national assets. Those who spoke at the meeting included Mohsin Raza, Liaquat Magsi, Amin Baloch, Waseem Beg, Gul Hameed, Nadeem Ahmad and Hassan Murtaza.