LAHORE: Opposition Leader in the Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz has predicted an escalation in inflation after the forthcoming budget.

“There will be a tsunami of price hike after the budget, as the government has proposed new taxes worth Rs700 billion in the budget to be presented next month, and the selected rulers have no agenda to rescue the sinking boat of national economy,” Hamza said while talking to the media here on Sunday after condoling with the family whose six members died in a roof collapse incident.

He regretted that the rupee has been rendered as the weakest currency in South Asia only because of the incompetence of the present government. Besides inflation, there were many more issues created by the inept rulers and these included the problems resurfacing in Balochistan, he claimed.

The PML-N leader also said the country would be further ruined if Imran Niazi was given more time, therefore Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman would be convening a multi-party conference after Eid “to get rid of the rulers”.

Responding to a question, he said that his party would demand in the National Assembly institution of a parliamentary fact-finding committee on the issue of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman’s video scandal. The NAB chief, he said, would face the committee and record his statement on the issue and the alleged pressure he was facing from the prime minister’s office. “It will make the issue crystal clear.”

He alleged that incumbent ministers were involved in corruption, as Faisal Vawda’s offshore company had been unearthed and corruption worth Rs7 billion reported in the Peshawar Metro Bus, but there was no one to take notice of these scams.

He said Defence Minister Pervaiz Khattak was not being arrested in corruption cases on the pretext of his poor health, as NAB officials were only after the Sharifs.

He told a questioner that a technocrat government had already been imposed in the country as some former ministers of the PPP regime had been included in the government, practically making the prime minister irrelevant in running affairs of the country.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2019