Former federal minister Naveed Qamar on Saturday asked the government about Rs 300 billion paid to power producers to clear the circular debt as load shedding had further increased.
In a statement, he said the government had claimed that the power situation will improve within days of making the payment but despite the passage of several weeks and pumping in of hundreds of billions of borrowed money it had further deteriorated.
The deteriorating power situation should serve to open the eyes of the rulers to the reality that the crisis cannot be resolved by robbing the people to pay to big business, he said, adding, “It calls for rooting out the causes of circular debt.”
He said that frustrated by increasing load shedding the All Pakistan Textiles Mills Association (APTMA) had issued a fact sheet that showed that the power crisis had worsened.
According to the fact sheet the Punjab textile industry was on the verge of ruination as in addition to daily load shedding of ten hours the industry was denied gas for five days a week. This is contrasted with only four hours of load shedding and gas availability for five days a week in July last year, the APTMA fact sheet contended.
Qamar said the basic issue was the huge difference between the production cost and the price at which power was sold. If electricity continues to be produced at over Rs 14 a unit and sold at about Rs 9 per unit the problem will persist, he said.
The former minister said that even if the circular debt was cleared now it would crop up again unless the basic structural issues were addressed.
Qamar said that the Punjab chief minister used to hold protests against load shedding, adding that why Shahbaz Sharif was not resorting to those gimmicks to solve the problem.
The PPP leader also asked the government to explain the revised PC-1 of the Nandipur power project raising its cost from $329 million to over $574 million. He said that the Chinese contractor Dongfong Electric Corporation had asked for $40 million in cost escalation. This together with the increase in cost due to extended insurance period would raise the cost of the project to nearly $400 million at the most. However the project cost had now been mysteriously hiked to 574 million dollars, he said. He demanded a thorough probe into what he said “the worst example of white-collar crime to rob the public”.
Billions borrowed to clear circular debt disappeared: Qamar
