IT is true that owing to fast-depleting government coffers and high price of crude oil globally, the heavy subsidy on petroleum products was unsustainable. But the way the government chose to take away the subsidy and overload the masses with such a huge burden with a single stroke of pen was indeed a shock, especially because this is done by a government which came to power claiming it had removed an incompetent government.

While the masses, reeling under the heavy inflation, were expecting a major relief, the government totally failed to honour its claims and pushed the entire burden on the masses.

By overburdening the masses with such a heavy cost for taking a much-needed bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it is pertinent to ask what steps the coalition government has taken so far to tackle the ailing economy.

It has not only been unable to get any financial support from friendly states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), nor has it been able so far to introduce any structural reforms in the tax collection and governance system to control the major factors draining the economy.

While the government is overburdening the masses rapidly by increasing the prices of fuel, electricity and gas, it has not taken any serious steps to reduce fuel consumption or to reduce the huge line losses in power sector, nor has it taken any emergency steps to ensure recovery from the defaulters of the same sector.

Rather it has resorted to the easiest but the most condemnable method of just increasing the fuel and energy prices as a result of which only those will be hit the most who pay their bills regularly.

The government needs to think seriously over these illogical and cruel initiatives which have left each and every one high and dry, not knowing what lies ahead.

Amjad Ali Kheshgi
Nowshera

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2022