LAHORE, Dec 3: Opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly Qasim Zia has declared as “a bundle of lies” the one-year performance report of the provincial government released by the chief minister at a news conference on Tuesday.
“The poverty graph went further up, suicide incidents registered a new height, while constitutional and democratic institutions could not gain their supremacy and sovereignty during the last one year,” the opposition leader told a press conference here on Wednesday.
PPP’s deputy parliamentary leader Rana Aftab and information secretary Naveed Chaudhry were also present on the occasion.
Mr Zia said during the first 11 months of the incumbent provincial government, 4,507 people were murdered, bids on lives of 5,500 more people were made, 1,497 women were raped while 170 incidents of gang rape were also reported.
During the same period, 5,535 kidnap cases were reported, 82 children and adults were kidnapped for ransom, 1,077 dacoities, 6,377 robberies, 1,171 theft, 8,811 fraud and 5,795 cases of vehicles lifting were also recorded, he added.
Only in two months, October and November, at least 100 people were killed either by robbers or by police, he said, adding a sum of Rs30 million was also robbed.
Chiding the argument that the crime graph went up because registration of cases had been ensured, the opposition leader asked if the chief minister would say that cases were not being registered during Gen Musharraf’s three years’ rule when army monitoring teams had been appointed for unrestricted registration of cases.
He said he was ready to contest the official statistics and figures in the presence of the chief minister at any forum to prove that crime rate had increased during his one-year term in the office.
Mr Zia, who is also provincial president of the PPP, alleged that new precedents of state terrorism had been set and political workers had been victimized by the government.
Deputy opposition leader Rana Sanaullah Khan was tortured for raising a voice against the rulers and women activists were sent to jails in far off areas of the province.
Police picked MPAs from the premises of the Punjab Assembly building and tortured them, he added.
He also criticized expansion in the provincial cabinet claiming that Rs800 million would be needed for such a big force of ministers.
Deploring that the rulers failed to give an action plan for reducing poverty, he said the CM would have better admitted in his press conference that more and more people were committing suicide after finding no means to support their families.
He said the government had no answer to the deteriorating law and order situation in the province.
This was not the government of the PML-Q, he said, but of an army general and the ruling party was acting like his employees as was admitting by Prime Minister Jamali by calling Gen Musharraf as his boss, he said.
Admitting that the government had provided relief to the farming community by exempting less than 12.5 acres of land from tax, he said its impact was nullified by introducing flat water rate.
The opposition leader said the recent chief ministers’ conference failed to reach any agreement on building any new water reservoir. People would have been happy to know if the government would have laid foundations of Kalabagh dam.
Contesting the claims regarding health sector, he said they were lies as state-run hospitals were devoid of medicines even today and the poor were dying for want of drugs.
No worthwhile task had been done in the construction sector as only an underpass could be built during the last one year which was still under construction, he added.
He regretted to note that the rulers were reviewing jurisdictions of market committees while officials were drawing salaries without performing any duty.
He said the day was not far when a democratic government would come into power, eliminating rule of an individual.