Down with privatisation: ‘Supporting privatisation amounts to treason’

WAPDA employees urge union leaders to take action against govt.

FAISALABAD/ LAHORE:

Those who support privatisation are traitors, hundreds of Wapda employees under the All Pakistan Wapda Hydro-Electric Workers Union shouted at a demonstration on The Mall on Tuesday.

The All Pakistan Wapda Hydro-Electric Workers’ Union (CBA) has given a call for three days of protests throughout the country. Hundreds of Wapda employees gathered at the Press Club at around noon and marched towards the Chief Minister’s House.

Workers claimed that the government’s strategy to privatise public utilities had failed in other instances.

CBA general secretary Khurshid Ahmed said the government’s experiment with privatising the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) and distribution companies in Rawalpindi and Multan had failed. He said the KESC had received billions of rupees in subsidies from the government. “Yet the KESC shuts down its thermal power station to double its profits.”

He said the demonstration against privatisation held on Tuesday was the eighth so far. “The government continues to ignore our demands and has sent the message loud and clear that it does not value the workers’ services.”

He said Wapda employees weren’t running a corporation for profit – they were providing a public utility. More than 200 WAPDA linemen lose their lives in the course of their work, he said, mentioning two linemen who had lost their lives recently.

He said he had discussed the matter with various political leaders including Khurshid Shah, Aitezaz Ahsan and Imran Khan. Ahmed told workers that he would once again remind them to raise the issue in the parliament.

Shouts of Go Nawaz Go rang throughout the protest. Maulvi Akram, the general secretary of the Okara Division, said they had voted the government in. “And we can take our votes back if the government does not take back its decision to privatise Wapda.”

He said their protests had been ignored so far. Akram urged Ahmed to call for suspension of electricity supply to the Chief Minister’s House.

“Say the word and we will take down the transformer right now,” he thundered.

Sajid Kazmi, Rana Akram, Rana Abdul Shakoor and Mateen Zafar among other representatives of the union, reiterated his call for action against the government.

FESCO offices locked in protest

Employees of the Faisalabad Electric Supply Company locked Fesco offices on Tuesday in protest against the government’s plans to privatise power distribution companies.

Workers staged a sit-in at the Fesco headquarters.

Wapda Hydro Union Regional Secretary General Chaudhry Sarfraz Hundal said the Fesco was the only DISCO out of eight in the country which had posted profits. It also had the least losses. He said the government was planning to sell Fesco’s assets for peanuts. Hundal announced that they would lock the offices for three days. “If the government does not take back its decision, we will not hesitate to take to the streets.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2015.