Miftah Ismail chides federal govt for gas crisis in country

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) senior leader and former finance minister Miftah Ismail on Sunday blamed the federal government led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) for gas and electricity crisis in the country.

Addressing a press conference at the Muslim League House in Karachi, Ismail said there was shortage of LNG across the country. “The gas shortage will make a huge difference to the country's exports and taxes,” he added. He maintained that Federal Minister Hammad Azhar had misstated facts when he said previous governments were responsible for the current crisis.

“The cheapest electricity is coal power installed by Nawaz Sharif. Hammad Azhar does not say that electricity of Pervez Musharraf era is expensive because his father was Musharraf's candidate,” Ismail remarked.

“The current government cannot do the service of Shahid Khaqan Abbasi for the rest of their lives. They can't close the terminal for a single day for which Abbasi and I were imprisoned,” Ismail said.

The PML-N leader lamented that residential areas of Karachi were also facing shortage of gas. “They are generating electricity at Rs20 from diesel. We had decided that furnace oil would not generate electricity. The terminals have not been maintained for two years,” he said.

Stating that the country was in the midst of a gas crisis in June, Ismail wondered what the extent of the issue would be in December when the demand for gas would multiply. He said the PML-N had removed the country from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) black list and brought it to the grey list but the current federal government could not succeed in removing the country from the grey list during its three years in power. Khwaja Tariq, Nasiruddin Mehmud, Allama Furqan Sheikhani and other PML-N leaders accompanied Ismail at the press conference.