ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has criticised Prime Minister Imran Khan and his government for the “skyrocketing inflation during the holy month of Ramazan”.

In a statement on Wednesday, the PPP chairman said increase in prices of 16 essential commodities, including ghee, flour, pulses and meat, at the start of Ramazan was a result of the PTI government’s “incompetence”.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari said the government had done everything to push the people against the wall as the record increase in prices of food items had broken the back of the citizens, adding that the Ramazan package was nowhere to be seen.

“Subsidising utility stores in Ramazan will not end the government’s responsibility as inflation in the open market is skyrocketing while most of the Bachat bazaars were selling items more expensively than the open market,” he said, adding that a common man does not have enough budget to buy vegetables and fruits for his family.

The PPP chairman said the rate of inflation was breaking its own record every month and the government’s own statistics on inflation were laying bare its perpetual failures. He said the recent report of think-tanks showed that the economy was suffering from severe slowdown.

Petrol crisis

In a separate statement, PPP parliamentary leader in the Senate Sherry Rehman said the inquiry commission’s report on the 2020 petrol crisis was a damning charge-sheet against the government and exposed its criminal negligence which paved the way for this crisis.

“From the illegal appointment of DG Oil to non-storage of oil for 20 days, billions of rupees have been looted by the oil mafias. How is it even possible that Ogra did not ensure that the companies are storing oil for 20 days? The report makes it clear that the government itself created this artificial oil crisis,” she added.

She said international oil prices were at the lowest since a decade, hovering around $65 per barrel and “all we got was a reduction of only Rs1.5 per litre”.

Similarly, PPP information secretary Faisal Karim Kundi said Imran Khan had promised to provide the poor with five million free houses, terming the prime minister’s housing scheme a joke with the poor.

“How can a poor person who can’t afford to feed his children get a loan worth lakhs,” he asked.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2021