Country would’ve in darkness...: Had PTI claims of power production relied upon, says Shahbaz

ISLAMABAD: The Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly (NA) Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif on Wednesday said had the last PML-N government relied on promises of Imran Khan accomplishing many power generation projects in KP province, the country would have plunged into darkness.

Speaking on floor of the NA, he said the last PTI government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa produced minus six Megawatts of electricity in five years. “What to talk about completion of mega power generation projects, they produced minus six Megawatts of electricity in five years,” Shahbaz Sharif said.

Sharif recalled that the incumbent Prime Minister soon after formation of the PTI government in KP province in 2013 had claimed that by using positional of the province, electricity projects would be completed. “Had we relied on his word, the whole country would now have been in darkness and many parts of country would have been facing around 20 hours of load-shedding daily,” he said.

Referring to speech of the Finance Minister, the Opposition Leader said that Asad Umar was stressing on speaking the truth but truth was lacking in his speech. He said the truth was that the PML-N government completed 5000 MW of electricity and also made net saving of Rs160 billion.

He said the PML-N government started bidding process in government to government financing between Pakistan and China. He said that the PML-N government completed Neelum-Jhelum project which was facing delay. “The Finance Minister should have announced to hold audit and accountability for delay in completion of the project,” he said.

On Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), he said that volume of the PSDP was Rs800 billion but the PML-N government could not consume whole development allocations due to ban imposed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on execution of development schemes on March 31.

He also used phrase of ‘embarrassed cat scratches a pillar’ while referring to some parts of speech of the Finance Minister. The Opposition Leader said the Finance Minister had failed in his attempt in creating gulf between the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and PML-N.