LAHORE: After the massive raise in salaries, the increase in privileges for the speaker and ministers of Punjab under the guise of leave allowance is absolutely ‘disgraceful’.

In a statement on Saturday, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Punjab, media cell chief Shayan Bashir stated that people were being crushed under inflation, unemployment, and skyrocketing electricity bills, to the point where many were driven to suicide. “Yet the indifferent elite continue to enjoy the luxuries of illegitimate power,” he lamented.

The PTI leader said this was the ugliest form of an exploitative system where power had become a means to suck the blood of the public.

He said the Punjab’s hospitals lack both medicines and basic facilities, where multiple patients were treated on a single bed, as if they were animals.

At such a critical time, for these ‘looters’ who seized power through the backdoor to increase their own perks, he said, “is the height of shamelessness”.

He said the PTI would oppose every bill passed for such luxuries that went against public interest and welfare. “Those looting the nation’s wealth will be exposed on every platform,” he said.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2025