SUKKUR: Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has said that people’s issues do not figure in the agendas of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf as Mian Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan are busy quarrelling over power.

Bilawal said at the inauguration ceremony of the 300-bed fifth satellite centre of National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) here on Saturday that he believed the confrontational policy Mr Sharif was pursuing at the moment was detrimental to democracy and the country. Mr Sharif wanted the democratic system wrapped up to save his and his family’s corruption, he said.

He said that PML-N activists had distributed sweets and danced in the streets over ouster of PPP governments by the apex court in past and the party leaders had exerted pressure on judges to get Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari disqualified.

Mr Sharif wanted to run the country according to his whims and he was ready to risk even the derailment of the entire system to hide his and his family’s sins. “But we will not allow him to have his way this time,” he said.

He said that people were least concerned about ‘Mujhay kyun nikala’. It was sad that the country’s prime minister did not tire of saying that he was not the real prime minister and his prime minister was the disqualified Sharif, he said.

He accused rulers of safeguarding their petty benefits at the cost of national interest. They were preparing to sell away national institutions like PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills to benefit their personal businesses.

Bilawal said that it was for the people to decide whether they wanted Metro and hollow slogans or they wanted modern hospitals in all cities. The huge amount being spent on Orange Line in Lahore was more than the education budget of all the provinces put together, he claimed.

He said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had earlier paid a grant of Rs300 million and now another tranche of Rs270m to Madressah Haqqania while it had failed to build even one government hospital or college in the province during past five years. In reality Imran Khan was paying “extortion money” to the madressah to strengthen Talibanisation in the province, he said.

He invited Chief Justice of Pakistan to pay a visit to NICVD Sukkur and other hospitals in Sindh besides the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and see the quality of healthcare being provided to people free of cost.

He complained the National Accountability Bureau had double standards for Sindh and other provinces and stressed that the law should be equal for everyone. “We do not claim that we are 100 per cent right but we are improving. There is no place in the country where five cardiac hospitals exist and provide medical treatment to patients free of cost,” he said.

He said that Sindh was the only province which provided treatment of cancer through latest CyberKnife technology which served not only people of Sindh but all Pakistanis free of cost.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said the governments in provinces were busy planting trees and launching expensive bus projects while only PPP was serving people.

He said the NICVD now existed not only in Karachi but also in Larkana, Sukkur, Tando Mohammad Khan, Sehwan and Hyderabad to provide free treatment to cardiac patients.

The federal government had allocated Rs400 billion for the country’s highways projects of which only Rs27bn had been allocated for Sindh.

He said that a big public meeting would be held in Sukkur soon.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2018