PA demands increase in compensation for electrocution victims to Rs50 million

The Sindh Assembly on Tuesday passed a private resolution calling upon the authorities concerned to increase the amount of financial compensation to the victims of electrocution who died in recent rains in Karachi to Rs50 million each.

The resolution on the private members’ day of the session of the Sindh Assembly was moved by an opposition legislator of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Dr Seema Zia.

The resolution in its original form contained a demand for increasing financial compensation for the victims of electrocution in the city to Rs5 million but the demand was increased to Rs50 million after an amendment was inserted in the resolution. The amendment was moved by an opposition lawmaker of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, Mufti Qasim Fakhri.

The resolution passed by the house demanded an increase in financial compensation for 20 victims of electrocution. Mufti Qasim Fakhri, however, said in his speech said 23 people had lost their lives in the first spell of monsoon rains while 17 persons died in the second spell in Karachi.

He said financial compensation in the cases of victims of electrocution should be increased to Rs50 million. He said no one among the rulers was willing to raise his voice against the “injustices of K-Electric”.

The opposition legislator said that financial compensation demanded by him for the victims of electrocution was not much as recently a federal minister had raised Rs20 million just for the sake of doing sanitation work in the city.

MQM legislator Rabia Khatoon said that the “defective” electric supply system of the K-Electric had caused deaths of some 30 people in the city. She said that words were insufficient to describe the serious tragedy of three young friends who had together lost their lives due to electrocution in the DHA area of the city during the recent rains.

She said that measures had to be taken against the faulty system of the power utility. An MPA of the opposition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, Syed Abdul Rasheed, said that exploitation by the K-Electric had been continuing for the last 13 to 14 years with no check at all. He said that no one was willing to raise his or her voice against the injustices of the K-Electric.

He claimed that the KE had not observed a single precautionary measure, including the laying of neutral wires alongside electricity poles, despite numerous instances of deaths in the city due to electrocution.

The opposition legislator said that privatised management of the K-Electric was responsible for stealing precious copper wire from its power distribution for minting money. He said some mechanism had to be adopted to hold the K-Electric accountable for its grave misdeeds. He said that influential people and political parties had vested interested in the management of the K-Electric as they had got lucrative contracts regarding its functioning.

“We are the ones who do agitation and stage protest sit-ins outside the offices of K-Electric,” he said while talking about his parent political party, i.e. Jamaat-e-Islami. An MPA of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, Imdad Pitafi, said that the federal government of the PTI would ensure payment of compensation to the victims of electrocution in the same manner it had earlier provided jobs to some one million people in the country.

He said that this was the first time that a prime minister had assumed power in the country who deemed it justified to take “U-turns” in his policies and moves. The house passed the resolution of the PTI’s lawmaker after an amendment in the amount of compensation. The house was later adjourned till 2pm on Wednesday.