Daily Times

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has said that Lahore was completely ignored in the provincial budget of fiscal year 2020-21 as the budget was only presented for the people of DG Khan, Mianwali and Lodhran. Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar, Prime Minister Imran Khan and senior PTI leader Jahangir Khan Tareen hail from these districts respectively. It was stated by provincial leadership of PML-N while holding a presser on Tuesday at party’s secretariat in Lahore on the budget of Punjab for next fiscal year.

“The Punjab of Shehbaz Sharif is orphan and unattended today as the government couldn’t initiate new projects here while it also didn’t allocate amount for the ongoing schemes,” said PML-N Punjab General Secretary MPA Sardar Awais Laghari. He said that the PML-N spent 470 billion rupees on development projects in Punjab while PTI could spend only 180 billion. He also criticized the government for not increasing the salaries of government employees. Laghari, who himself hails from the DG Khan district of South Punjab, lashed out at the government for not creating the South Punjab province as per the promise of the PTI government. This government destroyed the biggest project of South Punjab Forest abruptly, he said. “The traitors of South Punjab were supposed to establish new province. Where it is? They allocated just 1.5 billion for the whole South Punjab secretariat while only the budget of LDA is much greater than it,” said Laghari. He also condemned the allocation of just three billion for the development schemes of Higher Education Department. Talking about the allocation of 2.5 billion for the Aab-e-Pak Authority, he said that only the kitchen of Governor House can be run with this amount as Governor is the patron-in-chief of this authority.

PML-N Punjab Information Secretary MPA Azma Bukhari said that Punjab is reluctant to get its share under the NFC Award from the federal government as there is deficit of 484 billion in Punjab. She also said that the CM house was supposed to spend 5 billion during ongoing year but it spent more than 7 billion and therefore we demanded to make public all the expenditures of CM House.

Meanwhile, a resolution was also submitted in Punjab Assembly on Tuesday rejecting the provincial budget. “The Punjab government didn’t provide any relief to the poor people in the budget of Fiscal Year 2020-21. Only rich people and capitalists were given benefits,” said the resolution submitted by PML-N MPA Hina Pervaiz Butt. The inflation is on the continuous rise and the buying capacity of people has been decreased manifold, it added. The resolution demanded that the budget shouldn’t be passed until the salaries of government employees are increased and the minimum wage of laborer is set at 30,000.

Furthermore, the remarks of provincial health minister Dr Yasmin Rashid against the people of Lahore were also condemned and criticized by the MPAs hailing from the same city. “The people of Lahore gave thousands of votes to Yasmin Rashid in three elections but she used derogatory remarks for Lahoris. She must seek apology from the people of Lahore,” said MPA Azma Bukhari, who also hails from Lahore. It is pertinent to mention here that Yasmin Rashid in a TV interview has termed the people of Lahore as ‘illiterate’ and ‘a strange creation’ while blaming them for not following the SOPs that caused the surge in COVID-19 cases in Lahore. Two resolutions were submitted against Yasmin Rashid in Punjab Assembly on Tuesday by MPAs Kanwal Pervaiz and Rabia Naseem who also hail from Lahore seeking an apology from the health minister.