Galloping inflation

The people of Pakistan have a choice to make which is either they stand up and be heard, or else learn to live with galloping inflation, lawlessness, poverty and no subsidised health and education. This country today is faced with the self-created problem, where FBR has failed to collect over Rs 750 billion taxes annually for benefit of the elite, who get away with tax evasion. Add to this over Rs550 billion in pilferages on procurement in violation of PPRA rules, and another Rs 150 billion in the various scams annually. As if this was not enough loan defaults by design contribute another Rs 120 billion annually and Rs 150 billion for subsidised real estate allotted to the paid elite civil and khaki bureaucracy.

As long as the citizens of this country allow their politicians, big business, traders and civil or uniformed bureaucracy to rob the state exchequer without any fear of accountability, the citizens have to bear the burden of frequent hikes in fuel, ghee, wheat, electricity, gas, pulses, etc. Somebody has to cough up the extra money to bridge the deficit and for the government of Pakistan, be it elected or dictatorial, the passive people are the easiest option.

It is the people of Pakistan who elect the corrupt, or tolerate the equally corrupt military adventurers, who have wrecked this country’s economy and than transferred all their assets to their new adopted foreign nations, for they know that after what they have done, this country’s economical viability is no longer assured.

Efforts by the Supreme Court to check these daylight robberies are frustrated by the state prosecuting and investigation agencies as is witnessed in the NILC, Punjab Bank, Hajj, Rental Power, Railway and other scams that haunt us daily. The executive is more interested in saving the scions of the corrupt than protecting the state exchequer and assets from being plundered.

IRFAN BUTT

UK