Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday lashed out at the previous Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government for not taking timely measures for the power sector resulted in prolonged load shedding in the country.
During his visit to different areas of the city, Shehbaz took exception to prolonged hours of load shedding and ordered the relevant authorities to significantly reduce it by next month. He expressed anger over the increase in power blackouts in the country and the plight of the people, saying, “I will neither sit idle nor let anyone rest until the issue is resolved.”
According to reports, all industrial cities like Karachi, Hyderabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Faisalabad, and Sialkot are severely hit by 4-10 hours of load shedding, the population in rural areas are forced to witness 10-12 hours of power blackouts. In Karachi, 3-4 hours of load shedding is being done due to a reduction in electricity supply from the national grid by 300MW. Shehbaz said Nawaz Sharif’s government had generated surplus power, but Imran’s government failed to add a single new unit to the national grid.
He said neither fuel was purchased by the former government nor power plants were repaired. He said the PTI government had shut down power units that were set up by the previous PML-N government to generate low-cost electricity, and resultantly, the public was facing hours-long load shedding. Shehbaz said that the previous government had utilised low-power-generation units that supplied expensive power. Due to this injustice, the nation had to pay a heavy price in the shape of Rs100 billion every month.
“This is an injustice that the public is paying huge bills and not getting electricity during this hot weather,” he said.
The premier said an LNG carrying ship that cost Rs6 billion was now priced at Rs20 billion, and the nation had to pay more than Rs500 billion this year due to such injustice done by Imran Khan’s government.
