- Mustafa Kamal hopes PM will announce relief in power price
- Demands price for electricity should be cut down by Rs20 per unit
KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Mustafa Kamal on Saturday demanded uniform electricity tariff throughout the country, lambasting PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif for announcing relief for electricity consumers in Punjab only.
“We want uniform power tariffs in the entire country, there will be no compromise over it and the relief must be for whole Pakistan,” MQM leader emphasized while talking to media in Islamabad after visiting the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) office.
At a rare presser on Friday, Nawaz Sharif announced that the Punjab government had prepared a relief package by cutting the power tariff by Rs14 per unit for people consuming up to 500 units of electricity. “The relief will be given in the bills of August and September,” he added.
“We consider Nawaz Sharif the leader of entire Pakistan, but his yesterday’s media talk has alienated us. We are now forced to think, we won’t get relief being not the part of Punjab,” MQM-Pakistan’s leader regretted.
“The MQM will not accept it. If there is no package in Sindh and you tell us to talk with the provincial government,” Kamal said. “We are your partners and not the Sindh government’s,” he retorted.
Hoping the PM will announce relief in power price for the entire country, he rejected the decision on the power tariff cut in Punjab only. “Price for the utility should be cut down by Rs20 a unit nationwide,” the MQM-P leader demanded.
Kamal said that the situation had reached to the extreme where a brother was killing another over the electricity bill payment.
Mustafa Kamal had earlier demanded of government in a media talk to cancel the capacity charges agreement with local independent power producers (IPPs).
“I plead to the prime minister that 70 percent IPPs have been locally owned. Talk to them over the mistaken policy. You have earned thousands of billions and now we could not pay more,” MQM leader said.
The MQM leader claimed Pakistan possessed electricity beyond its consumption demand as it had the ability to generate more than 45,000 megawatts electricity. However, he said, the country’s transmission lines had the capacity of merely 22-25,000 megawatts.
Emphasizing the need for providing people relief, Kamal suggested to the government to sit down and talk with the 30% local and 50% public independent power producers (IPPs), keeping aside the 20% foreign IPPs initially, as they had international agreements.
“These IPPs have already made billions of rupees (in terms of charges for their services),” he said.
He also proposed privatisation of electricity distribution companies and giving licence to more companies in a region too.
