January 25, 2007	Thursday	Muharram 05, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 24: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Punjab Information Secretary Farzana Raja has condemned the worsening law and order situation in the province, saying people were losing their cash, vehicles and cell phones every but “no criminal has been arrested so far.”

In a statement, she deplored the Punjab government for failing to improve the law and order situation in the province. She said “the chief minister had admitted the poor performance of Punjab police.” Despite an increase in funds for law and order, “the situation in the province is out of control,” she added.

She said that after sugar, cement and the stock market scams, the health sector was now “suffering under the government’s incompetent polices.”

She said that there was a shortage of many life-saving drugs in the market and thousands of infants could not be given the BCG vaccine due to this. She said there were about 250,000 TB patients in the country and that their number was increasing every year.

“The annual incidence of infections in Pakistan is 171 persons per 1,000 (or 17 per cent). The public hospitals started running low on the vaccine two months ago and have nearly run of it now,” she claimed.

Ms Raja said, “the condition of the poor people was going bad to worse due to unjust distribution of resources.”

She said certain groups of pharmaceutical companies had curtailed their production levels to create an artificial shortage in the market to increase the price of medicines, which was “tantamount to playing with the lives of people.”

She said, “on the one hand, people are committing suicides due to poverty but on the other hand government keeps making claims of ‘good governance’ and ‘people-friendly’ economic policies.”

“Looters of billions of rupees from the stock market are now transforming into ‘industrialists’ and making people’s lives miserable by their misdeeds,” she lamented.