MULTAN, July 21: Nepra’s decision of allowing the Wapda for unprecedented hike in power tariff has come under severe criticism by people from all walks of life.

The worst-hit however are the agriculture sector and domestic consumers belonging to the middle-class income group. Newspaper offices have been flooded with statements of condemnation by various organizations against the Nepra decision.

Farmers Associates of Pakistan chairman Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the 44 paisa per unit increase in the power tariff for farm tubewells would have adverse affects on the agriculture sector and the prevalent drought situation.

He said the tubewell irrigation was the only source to cope with the persistent water shortage in the country, but the tariff hike would increase the cost of production.

Farmers, he said, would be left with no option but to minimize its use which would ultimately cause soil degradation. He said the FAP had called its meeting to deliberate upon the Nepra move and its repercussions on the farm production.

The district secretary-general of Kissan Board Pakistan, Iqbal Joiya, slated the government for its anti-agriculturists measures, including the GST on farm inputs and making the electricity costlier for farmers.

He said on one hand the production cost in farm sector was continuously being increased while on the other the growers had no respite against the exploitation of buyers of farm outputs which had turned the agriculture a business of accumulating losses. The KBP has termed the Nepra decision anti-people and anti-grower, he added.

Small Growers Association chairman Ishtiaq Jafri decried the hike in power rates saying the government wanted that small farmers should vacate lands after incurring losses so that the agenda of corporatizing the agriculture sector could be materialized.

Instead of facilitating the farming community, he said, the government was hard-pressing them by taking such steps that had led to increase in the production cost of agricultural produces.

The life of domestic growers was being made miserable on the recommendation of the consultants of the IMF and World Bank, he lamented.

Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Mian Anees Ahmed Sheikh also condemned the Nepra through a statement for raising electricity rates. He termed the 21 per cent increase in the power tariff unprecedented in the country’s history that had clamped in one go.

He said now power consumption would become a luxury. He opined that domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural and trade consumers would all affect from the levy.

The industrial cost of production had already been too high to sell goods at competitive prices in the international market and the recent increase in power tariff would further reduce the volume of exports.

He feared that more industrial unit would become sick and the already slow-paced industrial growth in the country might be halted. He urged the government to withdraw the decision of increase in power rates.

The provincial coordinator of the Working Women Association Trust, Ms Shahid Perveen, said the exemption to power consumers upto 50 units was nothing than throwing dust into the eyes of the people.

She said utility bills had already been consuming the major chunk of a working class family and the Nepra move would further aggravate the situation.

Punjab Jamaat-i-Islami naib amir Khursheed Khan Kanju said the hike in power rates was unbearable for the people already crushed under the dearness and inflation.

The government was taking anti-people steps at the beck and call of the international financial institutions, he alleged.