BEFORE coming to power and during his election campaign, Imran Khan’s party manifesto was to alleviate the misery of the common man and hold corrupt elements and mafias accountable.

However, regrettably despite a passage of almost two years after coming to power his government has still done nothing to make the lives of people easier. Corruption in all government departments is still rampant the way it used to be during the previous governments. Police still enjoy immunity and their corrupt practices continue without any checks. Profiteers, black marketeers and hoarders are busy in minting money every day on one pretext or another without any fear of being taken to task.

On the other hand, the PTI government only pays lip-service. It is no different than the Zardari and Nawaz Sharif governments. It has given a free hand to K-Electric to fleece the people of Karachi by using unethical tactics to make money in the shape of excessive billing and saving furnace oil by resorting to power outages.

According to an estimate, KE has earned post-tax profit of Rs17.3billion this year, whereas last year its post-tax profit was Rs12.3billion. Moreover, instead of granting a bailout package to Pakistan Steel, the current government has laid off thousands of its employees and reportedly announced its closure. I believe KE should be nationalised so that people of Karachi are not robbed of their hard-earned money and they can get rid of power outages and loadshedding.

A strategy should be made to make Pakistan Steel a functional and viable institution in phases, apart from reinstating its employees.

In the health sector, government hospitals are incapable of giving proper treatment to patients.

The government should bring improvement and eliminate corruption in government hospitals while there should be a uniform policy for private hospitals.

H.A
Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2020