The Sindh Cabinet announced to purchase of the two power utilities, Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (HESCO) and Sukkur Electric Supply Company (SEPCO) that are being sold by the Privatization Commission of Pakistan.
During the five-hour marathon meeting,?Sindh Minister for Energy Imtiaz Shaikh said that the Privatisation Commission had decided to privatize all federal government-run distributing companies (DISCOs) to private sector management, however finally, it decided to hand these over to the concerned provincial governments.
Sepco and Hesco would be the first DISCOs in the country that would be transferred to a provincial government, Shaikh informed the cabinet. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah stated that under the constitution the provincial government had the authority to undertake power distribution.
Consequently, he ordered the energy minister to appoint a consultant firm to thoroughly review the number of employees, sales growth, financial cost, target losses, and recovery ratio for both companies, so that they could be acquired.
The cabinet decided on the purchase of Hesco and Sepco and announced to operate them with the help of a professional private partner.
Meanwhile, the Sindh government finally took over the charge of three major hospitals in Karachi- the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), and the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) initially for an extendable period of 25 years.
CM Sindh Murad Ali Shah was briefed that under the 18th Constitutional Amendment, the Sindh government had taken over the administrative control of three devolved institutions in July 2011.
In addition, the cabinet on agriculture suggested that the wheat in government warehouses should be issued to flour mills at a cost of Rs 5825 per 100 kgs or Rs 58.25/kg.
The new issue price would need a subsidy of Rs 23.559 billion.
“You must prepare a foolproof strategy to ensure that the subsidy was passed on to the real consumers and the price of flour was kept in the range of Rs 58 to Rs 65 per kilogramme,” Murad Ali Shah directed the food department officials.