HYDERABAD: Sindh Progressive Committee (SPC) on Sunday organised demonstrations in different parts of Sindh to demand drastic cuts in the defence and parliamentary budgets, ample job opportunities, proper utilisation of natural resources and framing of policies to give a boost to the national economy and revamp the agriculture sector.

The SPC — a conglomerate of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), Jeay Sindh Mahaz-Khaliq (JSM-K), Awami Workers Party (AWP) and Awami Jamhoori Party (AJP) — had given a call for province-wide demonstrations to press the demands.

Carrying banners, placards and flags of the parties, the protesters in Hyderabad gathered outside the local press club and raised slogans against “flowed” policies of the federal and Sindh governments.

SPC convener and JSM-K chief organiser Hashim Khoso, CPP secretary general Imdad Qazi, Bukhshal Thalhu of the AWP and Adil Chandio of the AJP led the protest.

Speaking to the audience, Mr Qazi called for scaling down increasing inflation in the country, generating job opportunities and reducing defence, parliamentary and ministerial budgets to alleviate poverty in the country and mitigate sufferings of the poor masses.

“People who have elected these lawmakers are falling prey to numerous financial problems following the runaway inflation. These parliamentarians cannot realise the impact of the inflation because most of them are feudal lords, bureaucrats, business tycoons, industrialists and capitalists,” he said.

He said ministers and government functionaries frequently clamoured that there was an economic crisis in the country, but they failed to take the country out of it.

He said the tariffs of electricity, gas and petrol were skyrocketing while pushing essential commodities out of the reach of the common man. He appealed to people to rise up against this injustice.

“Pakistan, including Sindh, is rich in natural resources but the rulers are not utilising them efficiently and fairly. They must evolve strategies to address grievances of people by revamping agriculture, reducing prices of fertiliser, seeds and agricultural implements,” Hashim Khoso said.

He said that if farmers became prosperous, the country would progress by leaps and bounds as this was an agrarian country.

He said that unfortunately farmers were not being paid a fair price of their produce. The growers of sugar cane, banana, wheat, potato and other items kept protesting for fair prices and even they had to approach courts of law for justice. He said that mostly people were unable to buy even life-saving medicines after the price-hike effected recently.

In Sanghar, SPC activists held a demonstration outside the local press club. Led by AWP central leader Hassan Askri and peasant leader Mir Hassan Mari, they raised slogans against the rulers, saying that they had completely failed to give relief to the common man.

They said price hike had badly hit those segments of society who lived below the poverty line. On the other hand, they said, the ruling elite had not reduced their extravagant expenditure.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2019