MUZAFFARABAD: Two major opposition parties in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Wednesday launched a scathing attack on the Raja Farooq Haider-led PML-N government for increasing the prime minister and ministers’ perks and privileges by more than 200pc, saying the move had let the cat out of the bag.

“Over the past five years, the PML-N leaders in general and their party chief and the then leader of the opposition Raja Farooq Haider in particular, would criticise our party’s government for making ‘unnecessary expenditures’ and vow to set examples of austerity, if voted to power. However, Tuesday’s arbitrary raise in the salaries and allowances of cabinet has exposed them to the core,” said Shaukat Javed Mir, PPP’s media adviser.

“One does not need any extra wisdom to understand that their tall claims in the past were just an eye-wash,” he added.

On Tuesday, the AJK cabinet accorded approval to an over 200pc raise in the salaries and allowances of the prime minister and ministers, with only one dissenting voice from a member – senior minister Chaudhry Tariq Farooq.

The cabinet also decided to purchase 4200cc petrol jeeps for its members.

Mr Mir recalled that the PML-N leaders would also criticise the PPP for forming a large cabinet in AJK but Tuesday’s decision had clarified that they were just acting in an exaggerated way to appeal to the popular taste.

“In fact, what the present 12-member cabinet will draw from state exchequer in terms of salaries and allowances after the raise will be far more than what our 25 ministers were drawing,” he claimed.

Mr Mir asked the PML-N leadership to tender an apology to the masses for “throwing dust in their eyes” with false assertions and avowals.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s central vice president Taqdees Gillani also criticised the move, but said she was not surprised by it. “The track record of PML-N is replete with volt-face on different issues, including the much needed austerity,” she said.

Ms Gillani recalled that Mr Haider would repeatedly say that when voted to power he would bulldoze Kashmir House in Islamabad as it had turned into the de-facto AJK capital.

“However, after coming to power he has forgotten his statements and is himself spending weeks in a row in Kashmir House,” she said.

She said the prime minister was held hostage by the same corrupt lot in the official hierarchy that had surrounded his predecessor Chaudhry Abdul Majeed.

“So what’s the change now? Just the faces, else everything is all the more same… In fact, the PML-N is an exact likeness of the PPP,” she said.

Ms Gillani said the PML-N government had justified the raise by maintaining that the salaries of the ministers were barely sufficient.

“If that is the case, then how come the ministers in the PPP government as well as the then leader of the opposition had built palatial houses from the same salary,” she questioned.

Ms Gillani regretted that the government had denied salaries to several striking employees on the pretext of resource constraints. “But the so called resource constraint had not come in the way of the arbitrary raise in their own perks and privileges.”

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2017