Civil society protests against load-shedding and the government

Load-shedding has caused people to lose their jobs, says civil society coordination member.

KARACHI:

In this day and age, every business is run on electricity and nothing can be done without it, said civil society coordination member Dr Mueenuddin Shaikh at a press conference on Friday.

He added that a sense of doom was prevailing all over the country because of the government’s failure to address the problems faced by the people.

While criticising the government, he claimed that although load-shedding had become a sad part of life, nothing was being done to overcome it. “Load shedding is affecting every sphere of life,” he said. “It is creating problems in the education sector as students are unable to concentrate in class because of the lack of electricity and price hikes.” According to Shaikh, load shedding was causing people to lose their jobs and making them short-tempered.

Discussing the thermal power station in Sukkur which produces 50 mega watts of electricity and was shut down last year, Shaikh added that in 2005 the government spent over Rs40 million. “They provided the station with a gas connection,” he said. “The thermal power station produced 35 megawatts of electricity but was shut down after two days for no reason.”

According to Water and Power Development Authority (Rtd) chief engineer Abdul Majeed Siddiqui, there was no technical fault at the power station. “Its present capacity of 35 megawatts could be enhanced to 235 megawatts by installing gas turbines,” he said. “This power plant could help produce more electricity and thus open up more jobs.”

Shaikh urged the government to overcome load shedding and to use natural resources including coal, solar and wind energy to produce cheaper electricity. He asked the Chief Justice to issue a suo motu notice to order the government to stop load-shedding.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th,  2011.