The Pak Sarzameen Party has condemned prolonged and unannounced loadshedding and alleged inflated billing by the K-Electric and demanded an end to the utility’s “monopoly” over the electricity supply. PSPchief Mustafa Kamal has said that the only solution to resolve the electricity issue in the city was to issue licences to different power companies for generation, purchase, transmission and distribution of electricity to consumers in the same manner as that of cellular companies currently operating in the country. “As long as there is no competitive environment in the market, the K-Electric monopoly will continue to hurt consumers,” he said. He said that efforts were underway to sell the K-Electric, and that was why a furnace oil crisis was created most recently. “If furnace oil had been purchased before June, the closing balance and profit at the end of the financial year in June would be lower, which would make the K-Electric less attractive to buyers. The power utility had to show a strong financial position, which the company did at the cost of Karachiites.” The KE management was now pointing fingers towards other institutions for its “incompetence and criminal failure” to ensure an uninterrupted power supply to its consumers, he said. Kamal added that Prime Minister Imran Khan mnust reach out to the people of Karachi to heal their sufferings, because the PTI had won the highest number of national and provincial assembly seats from the city compared to any other city in the rest of the country. A day earlier, organised by the LyariAwamiMahaz, a demonstration against the electricity crisis was held in Lyari’sChakiwaraAwami Park, where the protesters demanded that the KE’s control be handed over to the Sindh government.
