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Jehangiri dresses down utility services, MNCs

RECORDER REPORT

ISLAMABAD: The Senior Puisne Judges of the Supreme Court, Justice Mohammed Bashir Jehangiri came down heavily on the public sector utility services as well as the multinational pharmaceuticals in observations he passed during the hearing of the Hubco-Wapda case on Monday.

He said these were fooling the simple citizens of Pakistan by charging them large amounts in one or the other way. While the Wapda and gas company extorted money through bills the pharmaceuticals inflated their prices in connivance with the bureaucracy, he said.

Justice Jehangiri presides over the five-member special bench of the Supreme Court seized with hearing the appeals of Hubco against the injunctions issued by two High Courts.

At the reopening of the hearing after a recess of nearly 45 days, the judges heard one of their former colleague, Fakhruddin G Ebrahim, explain why Wapda was opposing the intervention of international arbitration tribunal.

At one stage, when Wapda counsel spoke of high tariff the private power producer was charging the Authority, Justice Jehangiri said it was being done by a profit mafia which was operating in the other utilities as

well as pharmaceuticals.

He spoke of his personal experience as a member of the Government Pricing Committee on medicines and said he was horrified to find that a particular medicine for ulcers, being produced and marketed in Pakistan and India by the same company, was being sold at nearly seven times the price it was available in India. He said that at one time the pharmaceutical company wanted to raise the prices of a medicine by just 37 paisas and, to win over the Director of Health Services of that province, it gifted him with a brand-new car.

He asked Fakhruddin how he could condone Wapda when its own officials had signed the revised tariff agreements.

The counsel said that such things had happened but when the time for accountability arrived the culprits had managed to run away abroad.

"But, be rest assured, My Lords," the counsel said, things would improve

now.

But Fakhruddin had no answer to offer when Justice Jehangiri said that how he could say it as only the other day he had read in the newspapers that Aftab Sherpao, a former chief minister of NWFP had fled with the

connivance of some.

Answering an earlier remarks of wrong-doings by Wapda in billing the consumers, Fakhruddin Ebrahim read out a handwritten note sent to him by the Deputy Chairman of the Wapda, who was in the audience, that the Authority was doing its best to improve things and they had embarked upon on simplification of bills.