Daily Times

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz Tuesday said the government would adopt a coordinated mechanism to bring prices down and improve supplies of the commodities by anticipating shortages.

Addressing a press conference here to give details of the decisions taken in the weekly cabinet meeting and a meeting on price control, he said the government was aware that the price hike was a serious issue, which had adversely affected the low and middle income groups.

The meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan was also attended by provincial chief secretaries and food secretaries, he added.

The minister held the Sindh government responsible for the wheat shortage and difference of its price in the provinces.

He said the wheat crop was affected in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa due to rains. Both the private and public sectors had imported wheat and now the government had enough reserves to overcome any shortages, he added.

The people, he said, had to bear the hike in wheat prices due to insincerity of the Sindh government, which had now agreed to release the stocks to stabilize the supply and price of the commodity.

He said the cabinet was told that the loan owed by Roosevelt Hotel in New York was paid to the JP Morgan Bank and now the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) had complete ownership of the hotel.

He said despite the coronavirus pandemic, the revenue of PIA increased. The government had no plan to sell the Roosevelt Hotel, he added.

Shibli Faraz said the prime minister expressed dismay at the trend of establishing multiple camp offices, and stated that the rulers and the people should have the same lifestyle.

Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, while in the highest offices, enjoyed lavish lifestyles with many camp offices where hundreds of policemen were deployed, he recalled.

He said the cabinet allowed maximum of one camp office whose expenditure would be capped.

The minister asserted that the government was not worried about the activities of the opposition and would let it do whatever it wanted to.

Majority of the opposition leaders were facing serious charges of corruption, cases against many of them were in courts, some of them were convicted and some were on bail, he added.