Steel Mills, PIA privatisation to cause public agitation: Rabbani

KARACHI: The former Senate chairman Mian Raza Rabbani has said the Pakistan Peoples Party could move the court or adopt the path of public agitation if the present federal government went ahead with the plan to privatise Pakistan International Air Lines and Pakistan Steel.

Speaking at a press conference here on Tuesday, the former Senate chairman said the government should hand over management of these large public enterprises to their employees if it lacks the ability to competently run them. Rabbani said the government should constitute new governing boards after abolishing the existing ones of the PIA and Pakistan Steel. The new boards, he said should hire economic experts and run these enterprises for a year transparently. The plan to privatize Pakistan Steel is in fact devised to grab its precious vast land. He said the issue of privatizing public sector enterprises should be taken to Council of Common Interests for final decision on the issue.

He said the international financial institutions including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank didn’t have any authority to dictate to the Pakistani government to privatize these public sector organizations. The former Senate chairman said the govt is planning to sell them at throwaway prices when only three months are left in completion of its five-year constitutional term. He said the statements of the federal ministers on the issue of privatization are highly lamentable. He said the public sector enterprises should not be sold in such a hurried and unjust manner as they belong to the poor people. He also demanded payment of outstanding salaries to the employees of the Pakistan Steel.

He said the national flag carrier of the country has to face financial losses owing to the ill-advised “Open sky policy” of the government. Under this aviation policy the foreign airlines were allowed to operate in Pakistan at the cost of routine flight operations of PIA. He said several flight routes of PIA have been unduly closed by the government.

He said that recent order passed by Election Commission of Pakistan against the parliamentary committee on delimitation of constituencies is unjust as they cannot be passed by any authority against a parliamentary body.

He also expressed his concern over recent downward trend of the value of Pakistani currency. He said the government should first take the parliament into confidence if it is planning to sign any accord with a friendly country to increase the foreign currency reserves.