Lacklustre opening of NA debate on prices: Opposition criticises govt’s economic policies
By Raja Asghar
ISLAMABAD, April 14: Only low voices were raised against high prices of essential commodities in the country at the start of a National Assembly debate on inflation on Friday.
Absence of top opposition figures from the lower house appeared partly responsible for the low-key beginning of the opposition-sought debate, which will resume on Monday afternoon after a two-day weekend recess.
The debate, on several adjournment motions moved by the opposition members complaining about high prices of necessities such as sugar, cooking oil, petroleum products and cement, was earlier set for Thursday but was put off for a day to make way for a debate on that day on Tuesday’s bomb blast at a religious gathering in Karachi.
Opposition members, who formed the majority of the total 18 who spoke, criticised the government’s economic polices and the absence of full democracy that they said were mainly responsible for the prevailing inflation and other economic difficulties of the people.
But expected loud protests against monopolies such as sugar barons blamed for the country’s worst sugar crisis were missing.
Some criticism of the government policies also came from two prominent members in the ruling coalition — Kunwar Khalid Yunus of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Pakistan Muslim League (PML) dissident Riaz Hussain Pirzada.
Mr Yunus blamed an unspecified “political lobby” for the failure of the government’s efforts to check what he called sky- rocketing prices of commodities such as sugar and cement and complained of a perceived immunity enjoyed by Fauji Foundation enterprises, which he said had emerged as a third sector besides the traditional private and public sectors.
He proposed the opening of the country’s borders for commerce with neighbours such as India to defeat hoarding and other manipulations and called for the activation of a price control commission that he said was set up by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz last year.
Mr Yunus said he found during a recent visit to the northwestern Indian city of Jodhpur that sugar at a ration shop there sold at Rs17 a kilo compared to more than Rs40 in Pakistan.
Mr Pirzada, a leader of the so-called “Forward Bloc” in the ruling PML, urged the government “not to behave sheepishly” and act courageously to serve people’s interests.
He also blamed what he saw as a weakness of a subordinate parliament for the present situation.
Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho of the People’s Party Parliamentarians called for strict government monitoring of profiteers, hoarders and cartels and said the present government should resign for failing to control prices.
Dr Farid Ahmad Piracha of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal said the recent rise in sugar prices despite surplus stocks with sugar mills and the state Trading Corporation of Pakistan indicated a failure of the government’s writ.
Maulana Nek Zaman from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas used the debate to complain of military operations in his native North Waziristan Agency and called for payment of compensation to those whose houses and other properties were bulldozed in punitive actions allowed under the British-era Frontier Crimes Regulations still in force in the region.
