Daily Times

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday said he wonders that at a time when people do not have enough food to eat, no clothes to wear and they are deprived of shelter as well, ‘selected’ Prime Minister Imran Khan has the ‘audacity’ to ask people to stop worrying and be patient.

“At least 50 percent people were living below the poverty line during the times of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf, and now the country has landed in the same situation by virtue of the policies of the ‘selected’ prime minister,” Bilawal said in a statement. “Incompetent government’s economic policies have wrecked each and every household in the country,” he further said. “The very fact that wheat is available but flour is expensive, sugarcane is available but sugar prices are out of the reach of common man is enough to prove that Imran Khan is patronizing the mafias,” he added.

The PPP chairman claimed that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government will not provide any relief to the salaried class or pensioners in the national budget for the financial year, 2021-22. “Their only aim is to exaggerate the GDP figures,” he said, and added the reason why the ruling party is boasting about economic growth so much is that it has no intention to give relief to the poor in the budget. “If the country’s GDP rate had really improved, youth would not have been wandering here and there in search for jobs,” he said, and asked what kind of economic development is this in which those who were employed have now become jobless. “Under the PTI government, either every fifth person has lost his job or his income has reduced,” he said, and claimed that no other government, barring that of PPP, had made such kind of a budget in which relief was provided to the salaried class, pensioners as well as people belonging to other segments of the society.

Separately, PML-N leader and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi claimed that the federal and Punjab governments are the most corrupt in the country. Talking to reporters in Lahore on Tuesday, Abbasi said that the government is not ashamed of Ghotki huge train accident. He demanded a probe to find where the money supposed to be spent on the repair of railway tracks has gone. “The budget allocated to repair the railway tracks has vanished due to corruption,” he said.

Abbasi said that Imran Khan does not even come to the National Assembly for five minutes. “The role of the opposition is to raise the problems and issues of the people,” he said.

PML-N Central Leader and Punjab Assembly Opposition Leader Hamza Shehbaz Sharif said that PTI has put Punjab’s progress made during PML-N tenure into ‘reverse gear’. “The PTI has obliterated Punjab over the past three years exactly as they destroyed KP during their nine-year rule,” he said, adding that those who love Punjab should realise sooner than later that a weak Punjab would lead to a weak Pakistan. “Pakistan’s enemies would be the only ones benefitting from the financial, administrative and agricultural degeneration of Punjab,” he added.

He said during PTI’s rule, Punjab’s share in the divisible pool has been reduced by 11 percent. “As compared to the Rs 1601 billion for the fiscal year 2019-2020, Punjab was allocated Rs 1432 billion for the year 2020-2021. Even this amount couldn’t be used due to the incompetent Punjab government,” he claimed. “During the PML-N tenure, Punjab’s revenue collection increased by 121 percent as the revenue increased from Rs 142 billion to Rs 315 billion over a period of five years. But even after three years, PTI is not even close to that mark,” he added.