Ranipur (Sajid Ansari) WAPDA Hydro Electric Union Sub-Division Ranipur organized a rally and staged a peaceful protest demonstration against the privatization of WAPDA. A large number of WAPDA employees participated in the protest and raised various slogans.
The protest was led by Maqsood Ahmed Mallah, Talib Hussain Lund, Mustafa Larak, Irshad Solangi, Nizam Kokar, Aziz Hangoro, Abdul Khaliq Shaikh, and Asadullah Ajna. The leaders, along with WAPDA employees, took out a rally through different streets of the city, which later turned into a protest gathering. Speaking to the media on the occasion, the leaders said that the federal government has been chanting about WAPDA’s privatization for years, but this will never be accepted.
They stated that WAPDA is a public asset, and handing it over to the private sector would be cruelty and injustice to the people. The leaders further said that WAPDA employees are being forcibly retired, kept under financial pressure, and their future is being made insecure. For the past eight years, new recruitments in WAPDA have been banned, which is sheer injustice and must be lifted immediately. They added that under the IMF’s agenda, the federal government is moving towards privatizing national institutions, but WAPDA employees will never accept this conspiracy.
Their demands include regularizing contract and daily wage employees, providing jobs to the children of martyred and deceased employees, and ensuring immediate provision of due rights to WAPDA employees. The leaders warned that if the decision to privatize WAPDA is not withdrawn and the genuine demands of the employees are not met, the protest movement will expand further, and they may even be compelled to cut off electricity supply across Pakistan.
