Shahbaz arrives at LHC wearing corona safety kit

LAHORE: Opposition leader in National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif Saturday visited the Lahore High Court (LHC) wearing complete corona safety kit to sign the surety bonds against pre-arrest bail.

The bail was granted to him on June 3 in an investigation of assets beyond means by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

Shahbaz had tested positive for COVID-19 after the bail hearing and went into self-isolation, which delayed the signing of the surety bonds. He could not appear on the next hearings and the court kept allowing him time to sign the bonds.

On Saturday, Shahbaz arrived at the court along with Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) Deputy Secretary Advocate Atta Tarar and signed the documents before the deputy registrar judicial. Hearing of the bail petition is fixed for July 7. The court, on the last hearing, had ordered Shahbaz Sharif to get his latest test for COVID-19 conducted from the Punjab Institute of Public Health Sciences. Meanwhile, Shahbaz Sharif regretted that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had failed to even manage the electricity produced during former premier Nawaz Sharif’s tenure.

In a statement, Shahbaz said that under Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N government had rid the country of the loadshedding menace. But, the incompetent PTI government could not even manage the installed capacity of electricity, let alone build more.

Condemning the electricity outages across country, he said the shortage of electricity in Karachi and a tariff hike on top of that was a double cruelty.

The opposition leader in the National Assembly said despite ample capacity, the increasing complaints of electricity loadshedding across country were nothing but the product of incompetence and mismanagement by the PTI government. He said the shortage of electricity despite provision of extra gas and fuel was a result of the government's inability to run state affairs.

Shahbaz said people were baffled by the loadshedding, coupled with a hike in the electricity tariffs. People are paying inflated bills, though they are crushed under the pandemic. It’s due to government's economic blunders, unemployment and inflation, he added. He said the government was testing the patience of the nation in the worst way imaginable.

Shahbaz said that the increase in prices of everyday essential commodities due to hike in fuel prices is another unbearable load on people.