Daily Times

The PTI has been able to give this country ‘nothing but historic poverty, unemployment, and inflation’, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Saturday while addressing party workers in Tando Allah Yar, a private TV channel reported.

The PPP chairman said that Imran Khan had promised to provide five million houses and 10 million jobs, but instead houses were ‘demolished under the pretext of an anti-encroachment drive’. The poverty rate in Pakistan has surpassed that of Bangladesh and Afghanistan, despite Kabul’s 20-year war, the PPP chairman said, lashing out at the government for its economic policies. He said the ‘selected government is launching attacks’ on the public from all fronts – in terms of their human, democratic, and economic rights. “We will face off against this incompetent and inept government,” he said, as he announced that PPP would soon give a call for anti-government protests. He added that PPP is the “only party” that can give a tough time to the Centre.

Bilawal said that whenever a “selected government” rules the country, they deprive the masses of their basic rights – just like the PTI-led government has done in the last three years. The people of Pakistan are “not satisfied” with the three-year performance of “puppet” Prime Minister Imran Khan, he said, adding that the PTI had promised to provide houses and jobs to the people, but instead, jobs and houses were being “snatched” from the people. “They even tried to take away the employment of the chief justice of Sindh,” he said, hinting at the recent series of events that transpired after the high-ranking judge refused to be alleviated to the Supreme Court.

“Young people from Kashmir to Karachi are walking around with degrees in their hands but they are not getting jobs,” Bilawal said. “Even those who had jobs have been laid off in the last three years.” Bilawal went on to say that the “PTI-IMF” deal has benefited the rich and harmed the poor, while the masses are “looking to the PPP as it always sides with the poor”.