Two day holiday: Interior Ministry notifies, Provinces dissent

Two day holiday: Interior Ministry notifies, Provinces dissent

The Interior Ministry on Friday issued the notification for two-day holidays per week, following on from the decision taken by the cabinet to cope with power outages across the country. All government, semi-government and private institutions under the control of the federal government will remain closed on both Sunday and Saturday, effective immediately.

Confusion among the public though continues with regards to the measures introduced by the Pakistan People’s Party led government as all provinces have so far not issued a similar notification. The governments of Punjab and KPK have already rejected the decision of the federal government while Sindh and Balochistan had not issued a notification in this regard at the time of filing of this report.

The federal government faces a cash crunch after paying up some of the circular debt that had clogged the nation’s power supply. Although the payment, believed to be around 10-11 billion rupees, has got the power cycle moving again, hundreds of billions amounting to debt still remain.

The government fears it cannot continue to keep up the supply of electricity on a permanent basis due to monetary issues; therefore it has devised an austerity scheme in order to cut the demand for electricity.

Not only does the government of Pakistan want all offices and businesses to close for two days, all shops and commercial areas are to be shut down by 8:00 PM.

The measures were roundly rejected by the public and the business community. Many have argued that similar measures failed to conserve targeted amount of energy when undertaken a couple of years ago while at the same time they greatly harmed Pakistan’s economy.

The Government therefore finds itself in a tough spot and seems to be heading towards another collision with the public. Earlier angry protesters around the country rioted against load shedding and damaged government property, forcing Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani to intervene and release funds to ease the circular debt in the power sector.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan is also set to hold a full court meeting on October 17^th to decide on the matter after it initially rejected the government order to close for work on Saturdays.

For now government offices are set to follow the new directions and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has also announced that all its operation and field offices will be closed on Saturday and Sunday.

Posted by Ali Ahmed on Oct 18 2011. Filed under Latest News, National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry