Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Opposition leader in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif has expressed grave concern over the worst loadshedding of electricity, making lives of the people miserable amid scorching heat.

In a statement, he said the amount of loadshedding was alarming despite ‘excess’ power generation capacity in the system. He said that the people were starving, the school children were fainting, and this situation was deplorable and reprehensible.

The opposition leader said that the PTI should quit politics and Imran Khan should step down from the government after witnessing the shocking scenes from all over the country. He reminded how in 2018 there was surplus power in the system and there was zero loadshedding.

“If this government is so terrible that it cannot oeven manage installed capacity, it must go home and spare the people of Pakistan more misery in the heat of the entire summer to follow. If Imran Niazi is incapable and incapacitated to address this dire situation, a parliamentary committee should be formed so that the opposition would do something to provide relief to the people”, Shehbaz said.

He said the current government had already put everything beyond the buying capacity of the people, from bread to electricity and everything else. He said that Imran Khan’s policies have rendered millions unemployed and after flour and sugar medicine, people were struggling to access electricity despite paying heavy bills.

Shehbaz Sharif said that Imran Khan has gifted the nation with a ‘new Pakistan’ with old problem of loadshedding. Under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif, he said that 14,000 megawatts of additional power was generated to make Roshan Pakistan while Imran Khan could not even run Pakistan with 14000 megawatts extra power.

He said 5500 megawatts of electricity was generated in Punjab alone. But he said that over the past nine years, the so-called 350 dams of PTI could not be built in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from where electricity was to be supplied to the whole of Pakistan.

Far from adding a single new unit, PTI has not been able to restore power supply to the whole in three long years. He said that PMLN managed a reduction in line losses but this government could not maintain that reduction. He said that PMLN recovered 93% electricity bill, but PTI’s government decreased it to 82%.

He said that the present government was gifted a country that generates electricity at low cost, a country that had access to LNG. But they chose only to provide relief to ATMs, instead of the public, by generating expensive electricity on diesel, he said. He said that the government will now find a new excuse, write a new story of accusation and deception.