LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Punjab President Ejaz Chaudhry has said the Punjab government minister’s confession that 21 per cent people in the province are living below the poverty line is sufficient to prove that Shahbaz Sharif has done nothing for public welfare during seven years of his government.

In a statement issued here on Friday, Mr Chaudhry said it was shameful that a large number of people in Punjab were living below the poverty line while the self-proclaimed Khadam-i-Aala was bent upon building metros, bridges and highways.

He said no-one was worried about the plight of the hapless people while Ishaq Dar, in a bid to please the IMF, agreed to slash the current year’s Public Sector Development Programme by another Rs20 billion.

The PTI leader said the Khadam-i-Aala should come out his virtual world and push his administration to think for the have-nots of society.

PTI general-secretary Dr Yasmin Rashid said unfortunately under the cruel rule of the Sharif brothers the poor were dying or killing themselves for lack of food.

She said a meticulous planning and committed leadership was needed to end poverty and get out of the prevailing crisis, but the ruling elites were busy filling their own pockets.

She said a gap between the more privileged and the more backward had increased with time and this reflected in social, political and ethnic tensions, in revolts and in militancy.

Dr Yasmin said that Shahbaz needed to own the poor because nobody from outside would come to rescue them.

Information secretary Andleeb Abbas said around 60pc of the Pakistani population was facing food insecurity.

She said that policy makers had to think for the nation and not just for their friends and families.

She said the country’s finance minister was busy singing a song on single-digit inflation, fattened reserves and the rupee appreciation, while the Human Development Report 2014 had revealed that half of the country’s population was in the clutches of multi-dimensional poverty. “One out of two people in a population of over 188 million lives below the poverty line,” she said.

Dr Yasmin said how could the nation come out of shackles of poverty where the ruling party had robbed Rs450 million from the national exchequer on the advertisement during the PTI sit-in in Islamabad.

SARWAR: PTI member and former Punjab governor Chaudhry Sarwar has said the economic prosperity of any country acted as backbone for overall development of a nation.

However, Pakistan’s economy remains in the doldrums where severe clinical and structural challenges continue to haunt its foundation.

Speaking to key businessmen and traders at his office in Lahore on Friday, Mr Sarwar said the entrepreneurs were continuously suffering at the hands of corrupt Pakistani oligarchs, who had further aggravated the business community through the implementation of futile energy and business policies.

He said prominent businesses were subjected to inefficient energy policies where negative tax policies and power outages were causing great hindrance to production activities.

The business community, represented by Mian Kashif, Sohail Rana, Nasir Javed Chaudhry and others expressed their concern over government’s latest ad hoc policy of shutting down businesses by 8pm. All agreed that this policy would be unacceptable to traders and businesses.

Mr Sarwar said: “Our nation is in a grip of a serious economic challenge where outdated business and economic strategies formulated by policymakers are further adding to the crisis”.

He said the government should not target businesses for the failure of its energy policy. “Nowhere, governments hide their failures and target the businesses because businesses were the backbone of any country’s economy,” he said.

He said the PTI would stand with the businesses and traders against such non-sensical policies of the government.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2015

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