Victimisation: Leaders see bias in load management

Government announced that there would be no load shedding during sehri, iftar and Taraweeh but the promise is broken.

LAHORE:

Provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said that the current situation of load shedding was forcing people to take to the streets. He was chairing a meeting of members of parliament and workers of the PML-N to discuss the problem of load shedding in Punjab. The participants expressed grave concern over the growing intensity of power outages.

The participants of the meeting pointed out that the federal government had announced that there would be no load shedding during sehri, iftar and Taraweeh but the promise has not been honoured. They said that people’s lives were already strained due to the hot and humid weather and unavailability of electricity was only worsening the problem.

MNA Bilal Yaseen said that the issue of  excessive load shedding in Punjab will be raised in the National Assembly. Khwaja Saad Rafique said that Punjab was being severely discriminated against when it came to energy availability. He said the situation was nowhere as grave in other provinces. MPA Salman Rafique said that the federal government had a “step-motherly” attitude against Punjab in all matters involving access to resources.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th, 2011.