Reason we got energy crisis is because people like the writer advised govt that it's not its job to produce power.
DUBAI: This is apropos Farrukh Khan Pitafi’s article “The privatisation debate” (February 23). Can I ask the writer why he thinks that it is not the responsibility of the government to run businesses? Some businesses are too strategic to be handed over to the private sector. A case in point is the airline business. The most successful airlines in the world (Emirates Airline and Singapore Airlines) are run by the government. They are successful because they are run by the government and not in spite of it.
All of the successful railway enterprises in Europe are run by governments, while the failing railway structure in the US is run by the private sector. The list goes on and on. In Pakistan, in the past, privatisation has often been undertaken to reward friends who financed election campaigns. The reason we got embroiled in the energy crisis is because people like the writer advised the government that it is not its job to produce electricity and how wrong they were!
Aamer Zaidi
Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2014.
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