PESHAWAR: The Pakistan People’s Party has criticised the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government for sacking employees of different departments and warned of starting protest demonstrations if the process wasn’t stopped immediately.

In a statement issued here on Friday, PPP provincial general secretary Engineer Mohammad Humayun Khan said that the PTI-led government had already rendered many people jobless in various departments, including workers welfare board and population welfare, and was now pondering over doing the same in the excise and taxation department.

He said that the provincial government was bound to create more job opportunities for the unemployed educated people, but it was laying off the on-job people without any reason.

Mr Khan said that the PPP, when in government, gave jobs to thousands of people in different departments and also increased their incentives, but the governments of other political parties snatched sources of livelihood from the poor people.

“The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf should not forget its election manifesto and Imran Khan should materialise his promise of bringing a change in the fate of the poor people instead of putting them out of whatever source of livelihood they have,” said the PPP provincial leader.

Meanwhile, PPP provincial president Khan Zada Khan, Humayun Khan and information secretary Liaquat Shabab, in a joint statement on Friday, condemned the ruckus in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly the other day, and held the PTI lawmakers responsible for the pandemonium.

“PTI chief Imran Khan abuses leaders of different political parties on daily basis, but the politicians never reacted so harshly, but PTI lawmakers crossed all limits of decency when the opposition leader in the KP Assembly expressed his views in the house,” they said.

The PTI-led provincial government, they said had badly failed to come up to the people’s expectations and thus it had no right to remain in power any longer. They said that the PTI leadership should also learn to tolerate criticism.

“If the PTI leaders didn’t change their attitude with the opposition then the latter would devise a strategy to teach a lesson to the government,” they warned.

Published in Dawn, November 1st , 2014