SUKKUR, Oct 23: Traders have threatened to stop paying electricity bills and asked people to do so if the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company fails to end undeclared loadshedding and withdraw recent hike in electricity charges.
The Sukkur Small Traders Association, which met late on Wednesday night under the chairmanship of its patron-in-chief Haji Shafi Abbasi, decided to observe a black day on Monday in protest against what it called negative attitude of the officers and officials of Sukkur Hesco.
The meeting claimed that the government had fabricated power crisis to ratchet up electricity tariff and overburden people, who were already being crushed under the unbearable burden of price hike.
The meeting criticised what it termed as callous attitude of the government towards its people and blamed it for multiple crisis of power, water, wheat flour, justice as well law and order.
The meeting decided that in the first phase, the traders would observe black day on Oct 27 on Monday against the officers and officials of Hesco and put up banners in bazaars and in the city at conspicuous places, condemning their arrogant attitude.
In the second phase, they would hold peaceful demonstrations and in the third phase, they would give a call for shutter down strike and stop payment of electricity bills, the meeting warned.
The meeting supported call for strike given by Jamaat-i-Islami and trade unions of Karachi on Friday against Wapda and formed a five-member team to make contacts with chambers of commerce and industries, and different trade, political and social bodies to make the protest against Wapda a success.
The meeting came down hard on Federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and demanded his resignation, saying that he had failed to solve the water and power crisis.
POWER WOES CONTINUE: The Sukkur Hesco continued undeclared loadshedding for 12 to 18 hours daily contrary to announcements by the president, prime minister and water and power minister that no undeclared loadshedding would be carried out throughout the country.
They had also said that nine hour loadshedding would be carried out in urban areas and 11-hour outage would be imposed on rural areas but it appeared the instruction had fallen on deaf ears in Sukkur, where the prolonged power outage had completely paralysed normal life.
A few days ago, taluka nazim city Naeem Siddiqui had met with the superintendent engineer of Hesco Mazharuddin Ujjan and requested him to exempt water-works from loadshedding to enable the taluka municipal administration to provide drinking water to people without interruption, but since then duration and frequency of loadshedding has increased, much to the frustration of people.
An official at regional control center, Hyderabad, who gave his name as Mubarak said that the company faced a shortage of 7,000 megawatts and they had been directed to suspend power to Sukkur for two hours after every two hours.
And what about the government’s announcement of ending undeclared loadshedding, he said “they are political people, and I don’t want to make any comment on their statements”.
Our Mirpurkhas correspondent adds: A large number of residents of Satellite Town held a demonstration on Thursday in protest against hours long loadshedding and issuance of inflated bills.
The enraged protesters ransacked the office of Mirpurkhas unit of Hesco and burnt tyres on roads. The staff escaped on seeing the angry mob entering the office.
The protesters Hafeez, Riaz, Akram, Mujeeb and Qadir Bux alleged that Hesco officers were deliberately carrying out loadshedding for more than the fixed timings to cover line losses. They also issued inflated bills to the poor consumers for the same purpose.