PSM land worth billions of rupees belongs to Sindh govt: Ghani

KARACHI: Sindh Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has that land of the Pakistan Steel Mills worth billions of rupees belongs to Sindh government and they will not let the cronies of the present rulers secure this land under the garb of privatisation.

Speaking at a press conference here on Sunday, Sindh Education and Labour minister said that they were against the decision of the federal government to retrench the services of 9,500 employees of Pakistan Steel Mills(PSM). He said that Pakistan People's Party government would use every forum to safeguard these employees. The minister said that Sindh government had in the past too opposed the proposal to privatize the PSM during the regime of Nawaz Sharif and likewise they will not remain silent on the retrenchment of the employees.

Ghani said that Sindh government was the ultimate owner of 19,000 acres of PSM land worth billions of rupees. He recalled when the Nawaz Sharif regime had decided to privatize the PSM and at that time the Sindh government had offered to run the Steel Mill. The Sindh government had advised the federal government to hold negotiations on the issue.

He said the best available option was that the government should continue to own the mills and make sure that not a single employee of PSM was retrenched. Sindh Education and Labour minister asked if the federal government had sought approval from the Council of Common Interests before moving ahead with its decision to privatize the PSM in accordance with the judgement of the Supreme Court. He said that any decision regarding the fate of the PSM could not be made by the federal government without consulting the CCI. To a question, he said that they would oppose any decision to privatize the PSM without getting approval from the CCI.

The Sindh minister said that some five years back the PMS had owed Rs 35 billion to the Sui Southern Gas Company and if the dues were cleared at that time, the operations of the mills would have continued uninterrupted. He said that now the PSM’s liabilities payable to the SSGC had increased to over Rs 66 billion.He said that PSM had been utilizing its 65 per cent production capacity at the time the SSGC had suspended gas supply. He claimed that the PSM would have attained the stage of self-reliance in two years, had there had been no suspension of gas supply. Saeed Ghani said that he want to know the people who had decided to stop gas supply to the PSM as the SSGC was not able to recover its dues while the Steel Mills in the meantime had been pushed on verge of destruction.

He said that so far he hadn’t seen any effort of the PTI’s federal government to run the PSM as instead the losses of the PSM had increased during this time. “I have a question for prime minister as how many times the PTI’s government tried to run the Steel Mills as I haven’t seen any such effort,” he said.

Meanwhile, Responding to a question, Sindh Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has said that the main objective of Pakistan-based US blogger Cynthia D Ritchie is to tarnish the image of Pakistani politicians and political leadership in the eyes of people of the country.

“The media is giving prominent coverage to the dubious utterances of a suspicious woman,” said Saeed Ghani on the occasion. Dubbing it as part of a foreign agenda, the Sindh minister said the allegations have come at a time when there is an increase in death rate of the Covid-19 patients, the country is facing worst economic turmoil, issues of the sugar scandal and shortage of the petroleum products is being confronted by the people and these allegations have pushed the real issues on the backburner, he said. He said that attention of the nation was being diverted away from the issues of coronavirus, unemployment, poverty and aggrieved families of thousands of Steel Mills workers, and diverted towards this scandal.