Lahore High Court (LHC) Justice Azmat Saeed will hear on Monday a petition seeking exemption of hospitals and courts from load shedding and load management restrictions. The petition was filed by the Judicial Activism Panel (JAP) submitting that load shedding has badly hit the functioning of hospitals and courts, which respectively have 50 to 80 percent mechanical units operating on electricity. Through Azhar Siddique, the petitioners said that both sectors were directly related to the life of citizens and load shedding deprives people of their fundamental rights. JAP said that over the years, basic amenities of life have been dried up for the masses, whereas, they all are at disposal of the elite and ruling class, which did not face any load shedding or other problems.
On the other hand, due to absence of electricity, the poor were not getting proper medical treatment at hospitals while judicial cases were being delayed due to this menace. The petitioner said that litigants were also suffering due to outages. JAP said that load shedding happens when money of oil companies was not paid. The petitioner alleged that the federal government has not made any new dams including the Kalabagh Dam. JAP said that alternative ways of combating load shedding such as producing electricity from coal and other resources should be adopted. The petitioner requested the court to bring the offices and houses of the president, prime minister, governors and chief ministers into the net of load shedding. JAP said exempting government functionaries from load shedding was a violation of articles 9 and 25 of the constitution.
