WAPDA privatisation: The company will fall apart, say workers

Unions in upper Sindh try to prevent power companies from being sold.

HYDERABAD:

The Water and Power Development Authority’s (Wapda) workers union is doing its best to stop the company’s plans for privatisation and has gone to the government.

Union workers said that power distribution companies in Islamabad, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Multan, Lahore, Faisalabad, Kot Addu and Gujranwala along with the National Transmission and Dispatch Company are to be sold off by June 30.

The Wapda Hydro-Electric Labour Union held a rally and public meeting in Hyderabad on Thursday. The workers, led by their president, Abdul Latif Nizamani, chanted slogans against privatisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They burnt their flags and blamed the two institutions for Pakistan’s financial problems such as inflation, unemployment, taxes and load shedding.

Nizamani addressed the gathering and beseeched leaders to ignore the diktats of international financial institutions that he said would ruin the organisation. “These steps will affect the consumers,” he warned. “It will result in exorbitant bills and deplete supplies as well as affect power production.” Power companies will buy electricity from the national grid which will harm consumer interest.

“Companies earning profits will buy more electricity while those incurring losses will not. There will be power outages and differences in electricity bills,” he said. “There will be darkness in one part of the country and light in another.”

The union’s general secretary, Iqbal Qaimkhani, demanded that the government give up its plans. He said that the privatisation would affect unity and he cited KESC’s predicament as an example.

The union leaders warned that they would shut down the national grid or cut off power to the cities where companies are likely to be privatised if the government does not listen to them.

Similar protests were held in Sukkur as well. Hundreds of workers from Wapda, PTCL the Pakistan Post Office and other departments rallied outside the press club led by the Pakistan Workers Federation.

They travelled from Mohammad Bin Qasim Park to the press club where they staged a demonstration.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2011.