Nandipur plant is a financial and publicity scam:Moonis Elahi

Lahore: Moonis Elahi, Central Leader Pakistan Muslim League has accused Nawaz government of forcing people pay heavy electricity bills when there isn’t any. He has said that while Pakistanis are reeling from power outages, N League government is forcing poverty stricken Pakistanis to dig deep into their empty pockets as it has assured IMF of levying heavy surcharge on electricity.

Moonis Elahi expressed these views at a meeting held in Lahore today with a delegation of businessmen and traders belonging to Lahore. Moonis Elahi said that it had been over a year the N League government was in power and despite claims of ending electricity load shedding within months it had yet to bring any relief to the masses.

Pointing out at the sufferings of the masses, Moonis Elahi said the common man was reeling from the effects of load shedding which in big cities went up to 14 to 16 hours while it went up to 20 hours in villages, especially during the month of Ramadan. To make things even worse for the consumers was the fact that they now had to pay twice their last electricity bills in the new financial year as the Sharif government to please the IMF had withdrawn the subsidy of Rs. 124 billion from the power sector, said Moonis Elahi.
He accused the Nawaz government of coming into power by telling blatant lies to the people. He said that contrary to the slogan of breaking the begging bowl in the 2013 elections, N-League government had taken U. S $ 6. 7 billion in loans from IMF on unprecedented and highly stringent conditions. It is such huge borrowings which are today taxing the common Pakistanis, he said. Citing Nandipur Power Plant and Guddu Thermal Power Station inaugurations and the ground breaking ceremonies of coal fire plants at Port Qasim and Sahiwal, Moonis Elahi said that the PML-N government was jumping the gun and rushing into ribbon-cutting ceremonies for publicity and huge personal financial gains, instead of ensuring that the technical and financial criteria and all other requirements had been fulfilled.
No matter how hard N-government claimed of the controversial Nandipur Power Plant being operational the NTDC officials at the NEPRA hearing had belied all such claims and put the blame of approving the premature generation at an average cost of a mind boggling electricity production cost of Rs. 42 per unit on the N-government, said the PML central leader, Moonis Elahi