LAHORE - The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Wednesday urged the government to stop forced and unscheduled loadshedding with immediate effect. LCCI President Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry demanded this while addressing a press conference here on Wednesday. LCCI former Presidents Sheikh Saleem Ali, Mian Anjum Nisar, Mian Muzaffar Ali, Senior Vice President Ijaz A Mumtaz and former Senior Vice President Sohail Lashari also spoke on the occasion. The LCCI President said that discrimination in the supply of electricity would not be tolerated and same schedule of power outages should be implemented across the country. For instance if Punjab is facing 8 hours loadshedding daily then the other provinces must also face same duration of loadshedding. Elaborating the point, he said that whole country is one market therefore the supply of electricity should be same in all parts of the country. He said that if one part of the country would be getting excessive electricity and the other a bit lesser, the economy would suffer badly due the issue of competitiveness. Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry said that the government would have to act fast to avoid Kyrgyzstan-like situation in Pakistan as things were getting out of hands with every passing day. The LCCI President said if a consensus could be developed on NFC Award and 18th Amendment then why not on Kalabagh Dam, therefore the government should concentrate on winning a consensus that would solve all our energy related issues once for all. Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry said that recent gas, power loadshedding has given birth to new band of corrupt people who were asking money from the business community for uninterrupted supply of gas and electricity. The government should give a serious thought to this issue also. The LCCI President also appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan and Chief Justices of all the High Courts and Judges of the lower courts to decide matters relating to economic affairs and energy on priority basis. The LCCI President also rejected the recent hike in electricity tariff and urged the authorities to withdraw the decision forthwith. He said that there was no justification for the increase because both the traders and industrialists were already suffering due to acute shortage of gas and electricity. Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry said that SSGPL was supplying 0.5 MMF gas to SNGPL for Punjab and Khyber Pakhtoonkhaw, which was cut off from March this year at a time when the temperature was rising and we were expecting more gas in our system. He said that the supply should be restored with immediate effect. Attributing to the unprecedented power outages the result of incompetence, the LCCI President demanded a strict action against the officials responsible for the electricity crisis. He said that the business community was unable to understand that why the govt was not taking any initiative to put in place alternate electricity generation projects despite availability of huge coal reserves, vast tracts of Windy areas and abundant solar energy.