MANSEHRA: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has called a meeting of his party`s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa MPAs in Peshawar on Feb 20 to take them into confidence on allotment of Senate tickets and otherissues.

MPA Saleh Mohammad Khan said this while speaking to mediapersons here on Sunday. `We have demanded a Senate ticket for exsenator Fauzia Fakhruzzaman and a development package for Mansehra from the federal government and the prime minister has summoned a meeting on Feb 20 in Peshawar to settle these issues,` he said.

After allotting the Senate ticket to retired Lt-Gen Salahuddin Tirmizi from Mansehra the PML-N provincial president Pir Sabir Shah, who was tipped as the covering candidate for him, raised reservations about the decision,saying he would prefer to retain the sanctity of his party office and would not act as a covering candidate.

The central party command faced another challenge when MPAs from Mansehra demanded the Senate ticket for Ms Fauzia.

MPAs from Mansehra, including Saleh Mohammad, Wajiuzzaman, Sardar Zahoor and Ziaur Rehman, demanded the Senate ticket for Ms Fauzia and a development package of Rs2 billion for the district.

`All the four MPAs from Mansehra in a meeting with the party`s central leadership in Islamabad three days ago have demanded a Senate ticket and development package as we think the federal government should do more to address the issues of people who voted them to power,` said Mr Saleh.

He said that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz had bagged four of five seats of Mansehra district andthe federal government should divert more and more funds for the people here.

`We have been facing opposition in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and at thefederalleveland thisis why unanimous demands were made in the meeting with our leaders in Islamabad last week,` he said.

Ms Fauzia is the mother of MPA Wajiuzzaman, belonging to Oghi tehsil.

She has also submitted her nomination papers for the coming Senate elections against seats reserved for women.

`This is an appropriate time to launch development projects and I am optimistic the prime minister would give approval for that,` Mr Saleh said.

WAPDA UNION PROTEST: The employees of Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) have threatened to go on strike if the plan for privatisation of power supply companies is not scrapped.`We have been struggling since long for merger of all the electricity supply companies into Wapda, but the government is now planning to privatise these companies, which is unacceptable to us,` said Zaheer Ahmad Awan, the divisional chairman of All Pakistan Wapda Hydroelectric Union, while speaking to mediapersons after their meeting the other day.

Earlier, the meeting decided to take part in the Feb18 sit-in outside Parliament House to protest against the proposed sell-off of power companies in the country.

Mr Awan said that when former prime minister Benazir Bhutto divided Wapda into various companies the employees had opposed it, but now the rulers were going to take an extreme step of privatising these power supply companies.

Other union leaders said that the Feb 18 protest would compel the government to accept their demands and re-merge all the companies into Wapda.