LAHORE: In a scathing critique of the federal budget, Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), an ally of the ruling party, has declared that inflation has skyrocketed by a staggering 300 percent under the PML-N, making a mere seven percent increase in the government employees’ salaries and pensions an insult, given the ground reality.

PPP’s Lahore chapter information secretary Faiza Malik says that the minimal relief for the salaried persons has completely failed to come up to the public expectations at a time when the costs of food, electricity, gas, medicines, education and transport have drifted entirely out of the common man’s reach.

Instead of providing genuine relief, she argued, the government has chosen to burden the public even further in the recent budget.

Terming it an “IMF-pleasing budget”, rather than being public-friendly, the PPP leader says that crucial sectors like education and health continue to face “criminal neglect.”

She described the allocation of Rs46 billion for higher education and Rs25.10bn for health as a “mere drop in the ocean.”

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2026