PESHAWAR: Qaumi Watan Party activists on Friday held a protest demonstration against mini-budget, and demanded of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government to step down over its failure to control price hike.

The protest was held outside the Peshawar Press Club.

Party’s provincial vice-chairman Syed Fayaz Ali Shah, Peshawar district chief Malik Saleem Chamkani and others spoke.

Holding banners, placards and party flags, the QWP workers shouted slogans against the federal government and held it responsible for the frequent increase in prices of daily use commodities and growing unemployment in the country.

They said the mini-budget would cause more inflation.

They regretted that daily use items, agricultural commodities and machinery for treatment of different diseases had been heavily taxed.

Meanwhile, party chairman Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, in a statement on Friday, insisted the government was acting on the diktats of the International Monetary Fund.

He criticised the government for frequently raising the rates of electricity and petroleum products, and threatened the people would force the rulers to step down if they did not take immediate steps to control inflation.

“This government has no concern for the miseries of the people, whose problems have compounded over the last three and a half years,” he commented.

Aftab Sherpao declared that the PTI government was a threat to national security as it had ‘surrendered’ the sovereignty of the country to IMF.

He added the mini-budget would bring further misery to the poor.

“The purchasing power of the people has fallen sharply ever since the PTI came to power,” he remarked.

Aftab Sherpao said his party would soon launch a protest movement across the province against inflation.

He came down hard on the government for carrying out natural gas loadshedding in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and said the province produced surplus gas, but it was unfortunate that the residents of KP were facing unprecedented gas outages.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2022