LAHORE: The Punjab Assembly session, which started two hours and 35 minutes behind the schedule on Monday, witnessed a spirited debate on price hike and control, while the treasury had to try hard to defend the government’s performance on this front.

Samiullah Khan of the PML-N led the onslaught as the debate started, reminding the treasury that inflation stood at 4.7 per cent in 2018, when the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf came to power. In 2020, he said, it spiked to 11.30pc, making life difficult for common man.

Presided over by Mian Shafi, one of the panel of chairman in the absence of Speaker Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the session also missed presence of Hamza Shehbaz Sharif, who, despite issuance of his production orders, did not attend the proceedings as he was not feeling well enough.

Mr Samiullah said the price of flour almost doubled to Rs70 per kilogram, than Rs35 per kg when the PTI was “given” power. Similarly, he compared the prices of sugar and Ghee during the previous and the present governments to show the difference of governance by the rival parties.

He said Shahzad Akbar, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Accountability, educated us when he said that Re1 increase in sugar price benefited the industry by Rs5.5 billion, and then allowed the sweetner price to go double in the market.

He blamed the government for “wrong and delayed” decision-making on import and export of commodities that cost the country a whopping Rs400 billion. Sugar import alone cost people Rs300 billion, he said.

With this killing inflation came equally killing corruption, as all international bodies, Transparency International being the latest one, were saying that corruption had increased manyfold, he said.

“The list of PTI’s scandals is long that includes BRT, Malam Jabba, Billion Tree Tsunami, sugar, medicines and wheat crises etc. All of them point to one direction – official corruption,” he insisted.

Hassan Murtaza of the PPP took the cudgel up, where Samiullah had left.

“This government has lost its rationale on this one (inflation) issue alone. In the last few months, the petroleum prices went up five times. The electricity prices went up twice and the gas prices quadrupled but the government was still not serious about devising a mechanism to control them. A father throws his five children into canal because he cannot feed them and the leader of ‘Riyasat-i-Madina’ stays unmoved. He also does not move when PIA’s plane is confiscated and the country becomes a laughing stock around the globe. People are dying without medicines, but the government is busy bribing its parliamentarians, Rs400 million each, because it wants to win the Senate elections. This government came to power on [the basis of] lies like 10 million jobs, five million houses and bringing $200 billion, allegedly stashed abroad, back to develop the country, but now [it is] backing away from everything. This government has lost its mandate, and it must return to the electorate to seek a fresh mandate,” he concluded.

Raheela Khadam Hussain of the PML-N also took a jibe at the treasury when she told the house that Pakistan had become the most expensive country in the region, as far as cost of living was concerned, blaming Imran Khan and Usman Buzdar for it. She said the price control committees had become ineffectual, inflation was skyrocketing, people were dying but the prime minister was repeating one mantra “I won’t give NRO to the opposition”. This is tragic to say the least, she concluded.

Earlier, during the question hour on higher education, Minister Yasir Humayn conceded that the new universities faced a cut in funding because of Covid-19. Some of the universities were being run without vice-chancellors, but the government would fill the vacancies soon, he promised.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2021