KARACHI: Former fin­ance minister Miftah Ism­ail on Saturday blamed the “wrong policies” that were enforced during the past 75 years for the problems Pakistan is currently mired in, Dawn.com reported.

“When we built Pakis­tan, we changed seven prime ministers in the first 11 years since our inception. Then there was the judiciary run by Justice Munir that would approve of martial laws imposed by Ayub Khan, Iskander Mirza and other rulers,” he said, recalling the road the country tread to get to this point.

In his speech at a seminar here, the PML-N leader touched upon issues of population control, powers under 18th Amendment, collection of taxes by provinces, flaws in the judicial system, education policies, etc.

According to Dawn.com, Mr Ismail said the expenses of provinces had increased by 6pc since 2010 “but there is no one to ask them about reasons for the rise in expenses”.

He said provinces had been given autonomy under the 18th Amend­ment but the authority was not devolved to the grassroots level.

He described the lack of population planning in Pa­­k­istan as one of the reaso­ns for the country’s current socioeconomic situation. He said if Pakistan had matched the fertility rate to Bangladesh’s for the past 10 years, its GDP per capita would have been higher than 15 per cent.

Calling for reforms in the education sector, he said the nation must question if only one school was churning out students who make it to the top positions in judiciary and bureaucracy.

“I give you such statistics to make you feel uncomfortable and think about ways to fix these issues,” he told the gathering.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2023