Privatisation, a word that is but the father of controversy, is, once more, stirring storms. The Pakistan Muslim League-N government is trying to expedite the process of privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has reportedly asked authorities to bypass the legal condition of hiring financial advisers so that privatisation transactions might be completed before June 30. This only emphasises the government’s resolve to see the process through.

The government hopes to raise some $2.5 billion through sale of 20 per cent shares of 31 SOEs. The raised amount would help bridge the fiscal deficit and meet government expenditures

Trade unions are up in arms. “The privatisation issue is a national issue, because it involves sale of national assets,” says Khurshid Ahmed, general secretary of Pakistan Worker’s Confederation and Pakistan Worker’s Federation.

“(For instance) government-owned power generation plants, such as Tarbela and Mangla, produce electricity which can be sold to public for as little as Rs1.5 per unit. However, IPP and RPP units produce electricity that costs more than fifteen times that. The only interest that private companies have is profit; there is no attention to public interest.”

Trade unions have already held demonstrations across the country against privatisation. Ahmed says they will announce a more comprehensive strategy to resist privatisation at a press conference on Wednesday (tomorrow).

For now, workers and trade unionists lack broad support of political parties. Saeed Ghani of PPP, in a public statement a few days ago, had announced his party would join the workers if they took to the streets. Ahmed says PPP, representing Sindh, is the only party which has openly opposed privatisation in the Council of Common Interests (CCI). Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have not opposed it. However, he feels PTI and Jamaat-i-Islami, which control KP, should also announce their opposition at the CCI.

Proponents of privatisation say some 200 state-owned enterprises (SEOs) lose a colossal Rs500 billion a year, which breaks down to a loss of Rs1.5 billion per day. However, workers point out that some profitable SOEs are also on the list. The OGDCL and PPL, for example, are making a net profit of Rs91 billion and Rs42 billion, respectively (FY2013) and with a combined equity of Rs473 billion with zero debt.

Similarly, LESCO, Pakistan’s largest revenue collecting power distribution company, and FESCO, also on the list, are both profitable organisations.

Workers say policy of privatisation has been largely unsuccessful. Official data shows that a total of 166 SOEs have so far been sold for a sum of Rs476.5 billion, since 1990. Interestingly, a 1998 report by the Asian Development Bank on the impact of privatisation in Pakistan in the 1990s, one of the few available on the subject, stated that only 22 per cent of the privatised enterprises performed better than before; 44 per cent remained as before, while about 34 per cent performed worse.

“Multan Electric Power Supply Company and Rawalpindi Electric Power Supply Company were once Pakistan’s only two private power companies. However, they refused to give connections which were not profitable and resultantly they were taken over by the government,” says Khurshid Ahmed. “After that, these companies electrified vast regions, such as D.G. Khan, etc. In private hands, none of this would ever have happened.”

He says SOEs go in loss because of government policy failures, and undue political meddling in SOEs’ affairs. The workers and the society are not to be blamed. He says the government should focus on such issues, rather than selling off SOEs to private investors. Giving the example of power companies, he says, they go in loss due to power theft and line losses, and that some people sitting in the parliament are party to theft, which is why the government does not act forcefully on it.

When asked whether the workers’ efforts to stall privatisation can succeed, he says, “Resistance to social injustice is a duty. We have resisted previous attempts and succeeded. We are trying, and the rest is up to God.”

Despite the hopefulness, that a string of SOEs did get privatised, remains a stark reality, and the PML-N government appears determined. For now, workers can only continue to demonstrate.