LAHORE - Senior PPP leader Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo on Monday predicted PML-N government’s early demise for its failure to overcome the energy crisis.
In a press statement, Wattoo said his party will not tolerate the torturous unabated loadshedding of electricity of 16 to 18 hours and will confront the ruling party over its abject failure in this regard.
He predicted that the unbearable loadshedding in the country would push government’s early demise because the people had lost faith in rulers ability to get rid them of the menace.
The PPP leader pointed out that the farmers were most hit because they were paying more for the electricity which was not available and the agriculture produce had been suffering badly due to the water shortage.
Wattoo said the industrial sector especially the small entrepreneurs were devastated as the excessive and unscheduled loadshedding had ruined their businesses, while daily wage earners were losing their jobs.
He said PPP’s democratic government had ensured three hours uninterrupted supply of electricity to the tubewells at affordable rates to meet the irrigation requirements. Now sporadic supply of one hour electricity to tubewells has caused acute water shortage and resulted in decline in productivity which, he said, was like the economic murder of the farmers’ community.
The PPP leader said that continuing shortfall of 7,000mw was source of utter disappointment for the people of Pakistan because the government had miserably failed to narrow down the gap between the demand and supply. “It smacks of their claim of controlling it in months and not in years”, he observed.
Wattoo pointed out that the present government had not added a single megawatt of electricity to the national grid and the Nandipur Hydel Power Project of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had proved a disaster in terms of power generation and its competitiveness.
He recalled that PPP government added around 3,400 mw to the national grid and the scheduled loadshedding then was reduced to three to four hours. He asked the Punjab chief minister to set up a protest camp at Minar-i- Pakistan and beat the heat with hand fan as he would do during the tenure of PPP government.