JI chief says party will mobilise people against IPP, LNG agreements

PESHAWAR: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said on Sunday that his party would organise public mobilisation against agreements with independent power producers and liquefied natural gas suppliers, alleging that a small group had made billions of rupees through what he described as fraudulent deals.

Addressing participants at a training camp at Markaz-i-Islami in Peshawar, the JI emir said the party would seek to recover every rupee from those involved. "These corrupt people exist in all the three ruling parties and they loot people by becoming part of every government," he said while accusing political actors across the ruling setup of benefiting from such arrangements.

Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said Pakistan’s total electricity generation capacity stood at 49,000 megawatts, while actual demand was between 24,000 and 25,000 megawatts. Despite that, he said, the government had still subjected the public to loadshedding.

He also claimed that during the past few weeks of the US-Iran war, the government collected Rs180 billion in levy, and that it had received Rs1,234 billion during the current financial year.

Education and governance criticism

The JI chief said more than 10 million children in Punjab and over five million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were out of school. He said the outsourcing of government schools was leading to the exploitation of both students and teachers.

He also criticised what he called the continuation of a 100-year-old system introduced by the British. According to him, administrative, economic and political authority had been placed in the hands of the bureaucracy, whereas the Constitution required these powers to rest with local governments.

Comments on regional situation

Speaking about international affairs, Hafiz Naeemur Rehman described the United States as a terrorist state and said it had backed Israel in Gaza, resulting in the massacre of Muslims. He said Israel had been killing children in Gaza for the last two years, while the three parties in government had remained silent.

He further claimed that after what he called a humiliating defeat in the war with Iran, the US president now wanted to sit at the negotiating table. He said the Americans had repeatedly betrayed Pakistan and damaged peace.

While saying reconciliation should be pursued, he added that the United States had never stood by Pakistan. In this connection, he referred to the 1971 Pakistan-India war, saying the American fleet never arrived, and to 2001, when, according to him, Pakistan received nothing except militancy and economic destruction for siding with the US.

He also said Iran had opened the Strait of Hormuz and then closed it again because of a US blockade. He added that Washington was speaking of negotiations while simultaneously threatening Iran.

Party plans

Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said Jamaat-i-Islami would emerge as a major public force in local body elections across the country. He said Pakistan needed honest leadership and added that some parties spoke in favour of democracy but did not practise democracy within their own ranks.

He announced that the party would seek to enrol millions of people in a nationwide membership drive from April 25 to May 15.

Former JI chief Sirajul Haq, Liaquat Baloch, Dr Attaur Rahman, Dr Usama Razi, Sheikh Usman Farooq, Abdul Waseh, Maulana Mohammad Ismail and other party leaders also addressed the training camp.