Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President and Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly, Shahbaz Sharif has lashed out at Prime Minister Imran Khan-led PTI government over load-shedding and said that it is a glaring proof of the government's incompetence and mismanagement.
Sharif has also rejected the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government's claim that the ongoing power crisis is caused by the policies of the last Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government, reported The Express Tribune.
On Friday, the protests were staged at Nawabpur Road in Multan and Gondlanwala Chowk in Gujranwala located in Punjab, where protestors chanted slogans against the Gujranwala Electric Power Company (GEPCO) and the government, saying that 16 hours of power outage has made their lives miserable, Geo News reported.
"The PTI [government] falsely blames the PML-N for setting up too many power plants. This extensive load shedding today gives a lie to these baseless accusations," Shehbaz said in a statement issued on Saturday.
"And it is a fact that the PTI government is setting up more solar, wind and gas-fired plants, so the accusation of having more than necessary power plants is just false and laughable," he added.
The PML-N's president said, the PTI also "lies" when it says the plants set up by the PML-N were expensive. "This government hasn't been able to produce one example of a power plant set up anywhere in the world that is cheaper [than those set up by the PML-N]."
He reiterated that the PML-N's last government saved over Rs 200 billion while setting up three Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)-fired power plants and challenged the government to find one example of a more efficient or cheaper plant anywhere in the world, reported The Express Tribune.
"The PTI lies when it says that the PML-N didn't set up enough transmission lines. That is simply not true. The PTI cannot name one power plant that cannot be fully evacuated due to transmission shortage. Not one plant," he said.
He added, "In 2019, this incompetent government was able to transmit over 23,000MW and in 2020 in was able to transmit over 25,000MW using generation and transmission capabilities set up by the PML-N."
He said all the LNG terminals that the country has were set up by the PML-N, reported The Express Tribune.
"The only transnational LNG pipeline was also installed by the PML-N and cheaper LNG was brought to the country through long term deals made by the PML-N," he added.
( With inputs from ANI )
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