ISLAMABAD - Pakistan People’s Party yesterday demanded probe into the Liquefied Natural Gas ‘scandal’ and slammed the government for gas shortage in the country.

PPP Parliamentary Leader in the Senate Sherry Rehman said due to the government’s ‘incompetence’, the circular debt in the gas sector had reached a shocking figure of Rs 350 billion.

“As if our Rs 2,253 circular debt was not enough, now due to the government’s incompetence, the circular debt in the gas sector has reached a shocking figure of Rs 350 billion,” she said in a statement.

Pakistan, she said, “is already going through severe gas shortage and now the government will drop another bomb on people by increasing the gas price to pay for the circular debt. The only thing this government knows how to do, is to increase prices.”

Senator Rehman said: “This delay has already caused a great loss to the country. Gas demand is always high in winter, why were arrangements not made on time? Such casual behaviour from the government is just leading to one crisis after another. Why was there a delay in the first place and now why is it being imported on such high rates?”

The PPP Vice President said the nation was paying a high price for the ineptitude which this government often displays. “Just the delay in LNG import has caused us a loss of 122 billion. Instead of focusing on making progressive economic policies, the government seems busy in running anti opposition campaigns,” she added.

The Parliamentary Leader of the PPP in the Senate alleged Prime Minister Imran Khan was responsible for his cabinet’s decisions and failures.  “We demand that there should be a parliamentary inquiry over the delay in LNG import and gas shortage. The government must be held accountable for this mismanagement,” she contended.

Meanwhile, Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, the spokesperson to PPP chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said that the ‘LNG scandal’ was an example of the incapability of this selected government and its corruption.

“The nation lost 36 billion rupees just by delay in procurement of LNG this winter. During the last 2 years Pakistan lost 122 billion rupees due to mismanagement, corruption and incapacity of this puppet government,” he said. 

He demanded transparent probe into this LNG scandal. Senator Khokhar said that it should be investigated that who was responsible for this loss to the national exchequer. 

He said that the nation has a right to know that who has rendered this loss to the country and who in the government is responsible for this mega-corruption. 

Khokhar said that it is ironic that the National Accountability Bureau was unable to spot such mega corruption. He said that accountability and NAB in Pakistan was a farce and only a tool of the government to victimize opposition. 

Separately yesterday, the PPP deplored and condemned the continued incarceration of PPP leader and former Opposition leader in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah for the past over one year on “trumped up charges that the NAB has not been able to prove in any court of law.”

The party calls upon all human rights bodies and everyone with a conscience to protest blatant political victimization of Syed Khursheed Shah and demand his release immediately.

In a statement, the Secretary General of the PPP Parliamentarians Senator Farhatullah Babar said that charges against Khursheed Shah were laughable. 

In any civilized and law abiding society such charges will be thrown out immediately and those binging up such ridiculous and frivolous charges will be prosecuted.

The PPPP Secretary General said that this is a unique case in abuse of judicial processes. Syed Khursheed Shah claims to own a piece of land, having purchased it from the sellers in support of which he has also produced documents. 

“The sellers have also said that they have no claim on the piece of land having already sold it to Khursheed Shah. No one has complained that his or her land has been unjustly appropriated by the PPP leader. Yet NAB claims that the land is not his without providing any evidence in support of the allegation,” he said.

Babar added: “Shah has been opposition leader who did not claim medical expenses, nor the usual sumptuary allowance, nor performed Haj at state expense despite being Minister for Haj.”

He said it was most unfortunate that accountability in Pakistan had been weaponized to crush political dissent and for political re-engineering, more so under the present dispensation in which Chairman NAB allowed the organization to play second fiddle to the selected government.

Never before the accountability has made into such a farce as by the NAB under its present leadership which has willingly allowed itself to become a veritable arm of the powers that be for political manipulations and re-engineering, he said