By Syed Wahaj Ahmed
Afaq Ahmed, chairman of Mohajir Qaumi Movement, better known as MQM-Haqiqi, has appealed to the top judiciary to take notice of the latest hike in power tariff, while describing this injustice as a cruel initiative taken recently by the coalition government.
“The top judiciary must take notice of this injustice and absurd action of the government and make such imposition of today’s new tariff on used units null and void. Poor masses pay exorbitant loans being taken for the ruling elite of the country. Ministers, bureaucrats and officers of various public organisations consumed 340 million units free of cost in the previous year,” he said.
While strongly condemning it, he dubbed new high tariff of electricity as a cruel initiative.
He said this while speaking to party’s workers during preparations of the annual meeting of Sindh Urban Graduate Forum.
The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has lately pushed up the national average power tariff by about Rs5 per unit to ensure over Rs3 trillion with a view to funding the power distribution companies (Discos) which are mostly non-remunerative and called abodes of line losses and rampant corruption-cum-mismanagement.
“This is our bad luck that we threw our country into loans to rear this rich class, while poor people are paying these loans in terms of skyrocketing inflation. Our governments described loans and aids sent by our overseas Pakistan as its income,” Ahmed said
Suggesting to policy and decision-makers, he said that it is a high time to impose taxes on income of agricultural land. What’s more, he called for scaling up exports while giving all special facilities, prerogatives and big concessions to this sector. He further said and pleaded for curbing the unbridled imports on the spur of the moment.
He said that needy people were being coerced to pay high tariff of power, that said the entire government machinery including ministers, advisers, special assistants and bureaucrats, officers consumed free of cost electricity as this is the worst example of encouraging the elite class as they used more than 340 million units of electricity in the past year.
“There is no example of any civilized society that once a consumer uses electricity on previous tariff and the government announces a sudden imposition of new tariff after passing 20 days a month. If the government increases power tariff today, it will depend on consumers to use it or not, but if electricity units were used and new tariff is imposed on consumers, it is tantamount to cheating and it is against rules of business,” he said.
Speaking about pathetic history of the consecutive governments of the country, he said that since the era of the military dictator Ayub Khan, the straight governments have been getting foreign loans and aids to bring up the elite instead of making the country stand on its feet. Not a single ruler attempted to abolish this despotic system.
During the regime of the military dictator Mohammad Ziaul Haq, US which was being helped during the Afghan war and was pumping US dollars into the country and the elite kept enjoying monopoly.
Then after the 9/11 incident, during the epoch of military dictator Pervez Musharraf, many more Pakistanis left the foreign land because of panic and strong reaction to the West and resettled permanently in Pakistan and brought a lot of assets which raised the foreign exchange reserves to the new heights, while benefiting this class.
After the 9/11 tragedy, being a non-native ally in the war on terror, Pakistan was getting its big share till end of the war and this situation also benefited this elite class.
Meanwhile, people on the social media kept fulminating against unjust power tariff and demanding of the government to do away with it immediately as they are already facing all-time high inflation and they are struggling to make both ends meet in the current economic crisis of the country.
True! right demand
Keep it up 👍