KE comes under fire in PA over soaring death toll

Karachi
Lawmakers in the Sindh Assembly on Monday expressed grave concern and action against the K-Electric (KE) over more than 150 deaths reported in a single day in Karachi alone on account of the persistent and excruciating heat wave in the city.
On the sixth day of the ongoing session for discussing the annual budget for 2015-2016, Karachi’s power utility came in the line of fire with the MPAs linking the high number of deaths to prolonged hours of load shedding in the city and demanding that cases be registered against the federal minister of water and power.
Sindh senior education minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro called for all quarters concerned to approach the K-Electric and demand payment of compensation to the bereaved families.
Speaking on the matter, leader of opposition in the House, Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hassan, said the provincial government with the help of available weather forecasts from the metrological department could have run a campaign to warn the people about the extreme turn of weather and advise them to stay indoors.
He said the federal minister of water and power Khawaja Muhammad Asif could not absolve himself from his obligation of meeting the electricity requirement of Karachi by merely stating that 650 megawatts was being provided to the city through the national grid.
He said Karachi contributed a lot to the 11,000 megawatts of electricity available in the national grid.
Taking the KE to stock, he said when the power crisis became aggravated its centralised complaint service stopped registering complaints. He said he had visited the 118 service centre a couple of days ago and found that there were 6,000 complaints were already pending there 45 minutes before Iftaar.
He said the pending complaints were not being forwarded to the KEs field offices for resolution while the entire system of centralised complaint service was in total disarray.
Hassan said the Sindh government should also realise its obligation toward the KE and summon its officials to explain the worsened power crisis in the city.
During his speech, he repeatedly called for conducting the House’s proceedings with the air conditioners turned off for at least an hour so the members could also realise how the common people suffered due to the prolonged power failure.
The Sindh health minister Jam Mehtab Dahar claimed that government hospitals in the province didn’t face any shortage of medicines for the people suffering from heat strokes.
He said around 750 people had been brought to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre on Sunday and out of them 75 had died while 50 people passed away while on their way to the hospital. He said 90 percent of the people who had come to the Jinnah hospital after becoming ill from the heat were discharged after being provided first aid.
The Sindh minister for finance and energy Murad Ali Shah, on the other hand, absolved the provincial government from the affairs of KE while saying that the Centre had three officials in the power utility’s board of directors.
He said the problem was that the KE had properly maintained only 100 of its total 1,350 electricity supply feeders, most of which could not withstand the massive load owing to the rise in mercury level.
He said the people had resorted to protests and violence on streets amid the excruciating weather which also prevented the KE staff from performing their duties and repair the faults in electricity supply systems.
Shah said it was high time that all stakeholders concerned think about bringing improvements in KE’s system. He said the federal government had recently made certain commitments with the provincial government about slashing load shedding hours in Sindh, however they never managed to deliver on their promises.
He reiterated that he had written to relevant officials in the federal government about devolving the Hyderabad and Sukkur electric supply companies but there had been no progress on the matter.
The provincial minister for finance and energy held the Centre responsible for the persisting power crisis in Sindh and warned that a full-fledged protest drive would be launched by taking along all affected quarters to Islamabad.
“It would be a proper protest drive and more serious than the one led by the previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government in Punjab when its high-ups were made to use hand fans in a camp set up near the Pakistan monument in Lahore,” he said.
Protest against minister’s remarks

Later in the session when the Sindh minister for kutchi abadis Jawed Nagori began speaking about the annual budget, opposition lawmakers of the Muttahida Quami Movement resorted to protest in the House because they found some remarks disrespectful to the Muhajir community living in urban areas.
Nagori, who was elected from Lyari, said the people who had migrated from India to Pakistan should not be compared to those who had migrated with the Holy Prophet (SAW) from Makkah to Madina.
He admitted that the Indian migrants who arrive in western Punjab from the Eastern side rendered great sacrifices but they had acclimatised themselves with the local population.
However, the remark which irked the MQM, was when Nagori said the people who had migrated from India to Sindh had never absorbed themselves in the local culture. He said since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Mamnoon Hussain were from the migrant community, it was uncalled for to claim that the Muhajir community were deprived of their due rights and place in the Pakistani society.
Withdrawal of finance bill
Parliamentary leader of MQM, Syed Sardar Ahmed, while speaking on the budget called on the Sindh government to withdraw its new finance bill as part of the new annual budget for 2015-16.
He said it was necessary to withdraw the bill since it contained certain new taxes for urban dwellers of Sindh who were already suffering heavily on account of water and electricity crisis, besides the law and order situation.