KARACHI           -         Another private members day in the Sindh Assembly was marred on Fri­day by uproar and chaos of lawmak­ers belonging to Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as both the parties exchanged heated arguments on loadshedding issue in the province.

The situation became ugly when Opposition Leader Firdous Shamim Naqvi rose during statement of En­ergy Minister Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh who was speaking on prolonged power outages across the province. Soon as Naqvi rose, one of the PPP legislators shouted and asked the opposition leader to take his seat on which other PTI members also stood and started protesting against ‘unmannered’ attitude of a member belonging to the ruling the party.

Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani tried to calm down members from both sides who were exchanging heated words but later, he adjourned the house with majority of business including privilege motion, adjournment, pri­vate bills, private resolutions, private motions and amendments in rules were still to be tabled. The lawmak­ers of both parties kept taking a jibe at each other even after adjourn­ment of the assembly.

Earlier speaking on matter of pub­lic importance, Energy Minister said that the entire province was facing severe loadshedding due to what he called ‘incompetency’ of the federal government. He said the federal gov­ernment had stopped providing fur­nace oil to the power utilities at the time when oil prices were too low in the international market.

Shaikh also came down hard on the Federal Minister for Power and Energy Umar Ayub and said the lat­ter didn’t visit Sindh and hold meet­ings with concerned departments after the electricity shortfall. “This is a serious matter, the Federal Min­ister should come to Sindh and sit with all stakeholders including the provincial government, KE, Sukkur Electric Power Company and Hyder­abad Electric Supply Company,” he demanded.

The provincial minister also asked Ayub to tender apology for term­ing the people of Sindh ‘electricity thefts’. “Statement of the federal min­ister is a conspiracy against unity of Pakistan. Stop considering people of Sindh as second rate citizens as it is also a part of Pakistan,” said Shaikh.

He added that the power utilities were carrying out loadshedding up to 18 hours in interior Sindh. “The federal government owns 27 percent shares of the KE and its owners are donors of PTI. They (PTI) held pro­test outside the KE’s office yet they were served tea and cakes by the power utility,” he added.

Replying lawmakers written and verbal queries during Ques­tion Hour session in the house, Transport and Mass Transit Minis­ter Syed Awais Shah informed the provincial assembly that the Sindh government was the first ever pro­vincial government in the country to have notified CNG usage rules in pursuance of the orders of the Su­preme Court.

In reply to a written question of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pak­istan member Mangla Sharma, he said that unfortunately the CNG us­age rules were not being followed in letter and spirit.