ISLAMABAD, Sept 9: Former premier and PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto on Tuesday said it pained her to hear about the enhanced poverty, kidneys sale and suicide by the jobless youth of the country.

In a statement issued here by the PPP media cell, Ms Bhutto said it was a pain having to learn that every week 250 people sold their kidneys to earn money due to increasing unemployment.

She said this was a shame for the country where young people were forced to sell kidneys to live or forced to commit suicide.

“The shame can be removed from the image of our great country when democracy is restored and the PPP and its allies form a government,” she said.

Water and air, she noted, were basic needs for life. But under the present military dictatorship, which was busy in using funds to hunt its political opponents, the people of Pakistan had been deprived of these needs.

She said that in Lahore, one of the country’s leading cities, 67 per cent of the people drank unclean water. Deaths by hepatitis, she added, had increased all over the country due to this unclean water.