ISLAMABAD, Nov 8: Pakistan People‘s Party has resented the Senate chairman‘s foreign trip at state expense.

In a statement issued here by the PPP media cell, Senator Enver Baig said the report that a five-member delegation of the Senate was leaving on Saturday night for Mexico costing tens of millions of rupees public funds for participation in a conference on environment was most disturbing.

“The five-member delegation comprising the Senate chairman , his wife, Senator Khalid Ranjha, Senate secretary and a staff officer of the chairman will travel by first class to Mexico with each air ticket costing Rs795,000.”

“This is nothing but merry making at state expense and mocking at the poverty of the shirtless and shelterless in the country,” the senator added.

“Last week a father in Karachi killed himself and his four daughters because he could not feed them. He became one more statistic in the number of economic suicides. The Senate chief’s visit has also become just one more statistics in the long list of official visits at state expense. That the two statistics occurring at the same time makes one cry at the heartlessness of the high and mighty.”

He said: “Last week also a 12-year-old girl in a village in Sindh fell unconscious and later when she regained she confided to her teacher that for the last two days she and her family had been starving. Her father is sick and her brothers cannot find a job.”

“The State Bank says that poverty has risen to 33 per cent in the country meaning that one in three people in Pakistan are living below the poverty line.”

Mr Baig said it was distressing that money which could be spent on eliminating hunger and poverty and on educating the youth was being wasted on the pleasure junkets of the Senate Secretariat.