LAHORE, July 24: The Pakistan Wapda Hydro-Electric Central Labour Union has urged the government to discontinue power sector privatisation and ensure construction of new hydel and thermal power stations in the public sector to dispense with load shedding.

The national executive committee of the union, which met at the Bakhtiar Labour Hall here on Monday, described the power sector privatisation on the advice of World Bank a miserable failure resulting in an unprecedented increase in price for the consumers and diversion of Wapda revenue towards private thermal power generators. Privatisation of Karachi Electric Supply Company had resulted in unprecedented load shedding instead of any improvement in the power supply

Union president Abdul Latif Nizamani and secretary general Khurshid Ahmad said Wapda had been forced to resort to load shedding because the policy makers had prevented it from installing new powerhouses to cope with the growing energy demand during the past three years. Power demand and supply gap would increase further in case the government did not provide resources to Wapda for construction of new hydel and coal-based powerhouses to generate electricity itself instead of purchasing costly power from the private sector.

The committee urged the government to grant time scales to Wapda employees in accordance with the nature of their work and take steps for providing them protection during work and amendments to labour laws for bringing them in conformity with the International Labour Organisation Conventions.

It also condemned the Israeli offensive against Lebanon.