Daily Times

Opposition parties on Thursday reacted to Prime Minister Imran Khan speech and said that the government should ‘apologise to the people of Pakistan instead of celebrating its so-called achievements’, a private TV channel reported. PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said that due to the rising inflation, Imran Khan “snatched employment from thousands of Pakistanis.” He said that over the last three years, Pakistan had to be isolated from the world because of Imran Khan’s government. “Imran Khan talks a big game but he constantly fails to perform. He can no longer fool the people with bold statements,” he said, adding that everything stated by the prime minister begins with him and ends with him. “It is time he realises that in reality, everything needs to begin and end with the people of Pakistan,” Bilawal said, adding that over the last three years, only “PTI mafias could benefit from the government’s policies”. “Wheat and sugar thieves witnessed progress while the masses had to stand in queues for basic necessities, such as medicines,” he said. “A poor man who has to check his pocket again and again before buying monthly ration exactly knows about Imran Khan’s performance,” he added. The PPP chairman also said that Imran Khan has “brought the country to the brink of disaster in the last three years,” adding that restoring the situation may take up to a decade or so. He further said that the measure of a government’s performance is not based on the false figures parrotted by government officials, but rather by the conditions ordinary people find themselves dealing with. On the other hand, Opposition Leader in the Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz also released a statement regarding the PTI government’s three-year performance and said: “The PTI’s provincial and federal governments should mourn the three-year performance instead of celebrating it,” he said. “The PTI should apologise to people instead of applauding the inflation, unemployment, incompetence, and economic woes it caused to people in the last three years,” he added. Hamza further said that according to a report presented before the Supreme Court, irregularities of more than Rs3 billion were exposed in zakat and bait-ul-maal funds. “In the last three years, the prices of medicines have increased 13 times,” Hamza said in the statement.