I shall not tell police to stop power rioters, says CM

Raja Riaz accuses govt of instigating attacks on PPP members’ houses.

LAHORE:

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has said the Punjab government endorses protests against load shedding and would not seek to stop them, but then urged the protesters not to damage property.

The chief minister was responding to Punjab Assembly Opposition Leader Raja Riaz Ahmed’s accusation that the government was encouraging the protesters to attack the houses of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) members in the province.

At the onset of assembly proceedings at around 11.15am on Tuesday, Ahmed rose on a point of order saying the government should stop instigating people to come out on the streets to protest against power outages. He said the protesters had damaged government property and attacked the houses of PPP legislators. He said that if his house in Faisalabad was attacked by a mob, the blame would lie with the chief minister.

Ahmed said that the “incompetent chief minister”, who had failed to generate a single megawatt of electricity in the province, should stop blaming the federal government for the power shortage. He said instead of calming the protesters, the chief minister was shamelessly egging them on. He said that the Punjab government had stopped the release of water in seasonal canals, which he protested against as an agrarian.

In response, Sharif said that he felt no shame in endorsing the people’s protests against load shedding, but these protests should be peaceful. He said that Punjab was facing its worst-ever power outages and these had made people’s lives miserable. He said that as long as he was chief minister, he would support the protests. He said he would never issue directions to the police to stop or shoot the mobs.

He said that 650 MW of electricity that rightfully belonged to the Punjab was being given to another province. All the power distribution companies (DISCOs) in the Punjab were making profits, and these were being shared across the country. He said that despite this sacrifice, Punjab was being “treated like a step child”, with some places facing 20 hours per day without power. He said that of the total Rs400 billion owed to power companies, Punjab owed only Rs4 billion. He said that the other provinces owed Rs100 billion each, while the Karachi Electricity Supply Company owed Rs40billion.

The chief minister said that Punjab had fulfilled the commitments made at the first national energy summit in 2010 to close shops at 8pm and switch to a five-day working week, but the other provinces had not done the same.

He said that it was “the greatest lie of the century” that the 18th Amendment had given the provinces the right to generate their own electricity. He said that he had raised the issue at the Council of Common Interest in May 2011 and, with the support of the other three provinces, won approval for the provinces to generate electricity.

Sharif said that the federal government had foiled his plan to use bagasse, a sugarby-product, to produce electricity. He said 36 of the 75 sugar mills in the country were in Punjab. He said he had prepared a feasibility report, but the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority, a federal body, had not set the price for electricity generated from sugarcane.

He said that sugarcane had the potential to generate 2,000 MW, but the project could not be implemented because of the federal government. He said that he had been asked to establish separate grid stations in the Punjab, but it would cost billions of rupees and the provincial government couldn’t afford that.

The chief minister said that the federal government had withheld approval for two power projects in Punjab, of total 950 MW capacity, for two years and the investors had now abandoned the projects. He said that the federal government had signed contracts for rental power projects that generated electricity at 18 cents per unit, instead of reaching a deal with a friendly country’s offer for rental power projects that would generate electricity at 9 cents per unit.

He said that the federal government had wasted Rs113 billion on RPPs.

He said that if the public money stolen in the various corruption scandals the federal government was involved in were returned, it could be put towards ending the fuel debt and thus resolving the energy crisis. He said that he would even put in Rs5 billion of his own money for this.

The chief minister quickly left the house after his speech, prompting outrage on the opposition benches and a half-hour adjournment from the speaker.

Police cut motion

At the resumption of the session, the speaker announced the 43 ‘demands of grants’ for the various government departments in the next budget. The opposition presented four cut motions, including one calling for the police budget of Rs61.5 billion to be reduced to one rupee. Law Minister Rana Sanaullah opposed the cut motion.

Seemal Kamran of the PML-Quaid started a debate on law and order in the Punjab and criticised the government for failing to control crime. After a few other opposition members spoke on the topic, the speaker adjourned the session till Wednesday, when the debate on cut motions would continue till noon.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 20^th, 2012.