PTI signed 31% cheaper LNG contracts than PML-N: Omar Ayub

Says these deals would save Pakistan $3b in next 10 years

ISLAMABAD:

Responding to PML-N leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s news conference where he held the former ruling party responsible for the current energy crisis in the country, PTI leader Omar Ayub Khan on Monday maintained that his party while being in power had signed cheaper LNG contacts than the Nawaz league and that these would save Pakistan $3 billion in the next ten years.

“This useless and incompetent government runs on assumptions only. People are suffering from load-shedding because the ‘imported government’ is not releasing money to the power plants,” Khan said in a statement.

The former minister claimed that the incumbent government lacked strategy and had been incurring high expenditures.

“The country suffered because of expensive power projects. The current shortfall in Pakistan is 8,800 megawatts. There was neither shortfall nor load-shedding during the PTI government,” he said.

“The new LNG contracts that we signed [while being in power] were 31 per cent cheaper than the PML-N. Pakistan will save $3 in the next ten years because of them.”

Separately, PTI leader Hammad Azhar lashed out at the “imported government” for making a mockery of the constitution and law, as mismanagement, lawlessness ruled the roost in the country.

He said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif who enjoyed razor-thin majority in the National Assembly “destroyed” all the sectors.

“The official date of the unscheduled prolonged power outages speaks volume about mismanagement and incompetence of the imported government,” he added.

Hammad stated that the unbridled inflation and prolonged load- shedding proved it the “worst ever government of Pakistan’s history”.

PTI Central Secretary Information Farrukh Habib also lambasted the government for its “timid and weak reaction” over the blasphemous remarks by the Indian ruling party’s MPs.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, the PTI leader said that the government had wilfully adopted such a cautious approach on the issue of BJP lawmakers’ disrespecting remarks to safeguard and protect the Sharif family’s personal and business interests with Narendra Modi-led Indian government.

He said at the time when the entire Muslim world including the Arab states were unanimous on the point to boycott Indian goods, the imported government did not dare to issue a strong condemnation statement in this regard.

Turning his guns towards Maryam Nawaz, he said that a “criminal and convict” was using official protocol and had been “venting venom” on state TV.