Zardari, Bilawal oppose privatisation of PIA, Steel Mills

ISLAMABAD: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has warned Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to defer privatising PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) or get ready to face tough resistance from his party both inside and outside the Parliament, Geo News reported.

While chairing a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Privatisation (CCoP), Abbasi approved the privatisation plan for both PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills, which have been deliberately devastated, financially and administratively, during last four and half years’ rule of the PML-N. Bilawal said masses as well as experts have been taken aback by the decision of a man who himself was the chairperson of PIA before he launched his own profit-making private airline, whose profit rapidly increased. Likewise, Nawaz Sharif whose family leads the cartel of private steel industry in the country dragged the largest state industrial unit, Pakistan Steel Mills, to a point of operational death.

“Both Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and disqualified prime minister Nawaz Sharif are conspiring to sell PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills most probably to their hidden partners,” adding that they are selling national assets with one hand and purchasing by other.

Bilawal warned the PML-N government to stop ‘personalisation’ in the name of privatisation and called upon the people, especially the trade unions to join PPP’s struggle against the ‘economic terror’ being imposed on the people of Pakistan. In the meanwhile, former president Asif Ali Zardari has warned the government against the privatisation of PIA.

“Hurried and thoughtless privatisation of PIA without recourse to Parliament at this time is a crime against the people that must not be allowed; it will not be”, the former president said in a statement.

Zardari also warned the potential buyers to desist from buying the national airline in their own interest, warning that they may have to face consequences of being part of a commercial undertaking based on criminal motives.

PPP spokesperson senator Farhatullah Babar said the former president also directed members of Parliament belonging to the PPP to raise the issue in both the National Assembly and the Senate and expose the mala fide intention behind it.