Privatisation not in public interest: moot

In developing countries, the process of privatisation is a tool of international capitalism to loot and plunder the national resources from the indigenous people, and this process in anti-human in its very nature, said speakers of an anti-privatisation moot.
They said that in the past, the victorious kings and emperors used to collect tributes from the defeated nations but today the underdog nations had to pay this tribute in the shape of very costly foreign loans and selling of their national organisations at cheap rates in the name of privatisation.
The moot was organised by the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF) at the office of its Sanghar district chapter, attending by a large number of trade unions leaders and workers. It was presided over by NTUF Sanghar chapter President Comrade Behram Khan.
The speakers said that in whole world the privatisation process had resulted in rising of costs and tariffs of public utilities and thus it had open floodgates of poverty, price hike and joblessness. They said the shameful privatisation of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) was a textbook example of rise in utilities’ tariffs due to shoddy privatisation of the state-run entities. They said the closure of the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) and Karachi Transport Corporation (KTC) only benefited the private-public transport mafia which was also an indirect form of privatisation.
In Pakistan, the rising tariffs of electricity, gas and other public utilities were the direct outcome of this anti-people privatisation, said the speakers, adding the government was compelled to sell the national entities in the name of privatisation due to pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB).
The speakers said that international money lenders, such as the IMF and WB, not only charged neck-breaking interest on their loans but also used these loans as a foreign policy tool of the imperialist forces. ‘They used these loans for arm-twisting of the poor nations” they went on to say.
They said in the whole world the pro-people governments had rejected the so-called economic progress model of the IMF and WB, adding that these countries included China, India and Vietnam whose economies were on the rise, even without the crutch of the IMF and WB loans.
They rejected the proposed privatisation of PIA, Pakistan Steel Mills, WAPDA and other state-run entities. They also opposed privatisation of schools and hospitals, and asked the government that instead of selling these public service institutions rampant corruption and nepotism in them should be controlled.
The speakers demanded that the state-run entities that were privatised in past should be renationalised and mega corruption of ruling politicians during their questionable privatisation should be probed.
The speakers of the moot included NTUF deputy General Secretary Nasir Mansoor, Home-based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF) General Secretary Zahra Khan, Mir Hassan Mari, Sajida Kausar, Ghulam Rasool Chunar and others.