There would have been no need for the nation to beg for assistances such as the Kerry-Lugar arrangement had deficit in public sector enterprises (PSEs) been controlled, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif said on Thursday. Talking to reporters after chairing a meeting of the PML-N Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa coordination committees, Nawaz said the government had failed in overcoming the problems of price hike and unemployment causing the masses to suffer.
The government’s financial losses and corruption in state institutions such as PIA and Steel Mills were increasing each day. To a question, Nawaz said he did not accept the statement of the Indian prime minister that Pakistan should leave Kashmir alone. The party’s coordination committees also discussed election for the leadership of the two provinces. The meetings gave approval for election results of district bodies of the party. The election for provincial organisations would be announced after the meetings of the coordination committees of Sindh and Balochistan, scheduled for Friday and Saturday respectively.
After completion of the provincial organisations, the much-delayed elections for central offices would be conducted, most probably by July 15. Nawaz is set to become the party president after almost a decade in the electoral process as no other candidate would contest against him, a PML-N leader said. AJK polls challenge: MNA Khwaja Saad Rafiq told reporters that the party had decided to challenge the alleged rigging in the recently concluded AJK polls in the AJK High Court.
He said a team of legal experts had reached Muzaffarabad, the capital of AJK, to request the court take a notice of the rigging. He claimed that there was ample evidence to prove it. Yellow cab scheme: Nawaz and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif took a break from the meetings held at their Model Town residence and inspected the vehicles supposed to be selected for the Yellow Cab Scheme announced by the provincial government in the 2011-2012 budget. On the occasion, both officially launched the taxi scheme for the province.
Shahbaz said although the scheme would not eliminate unemployment, it would at least help decrease it to some extent, adding that transparency would be ensured in the implementation of the scheme. He said the previous yellow tractors scheme was also implemented in a transparent manner. “Those who are being critical of the scheme are people who robbed the Bank of Punjab, the NICL and the Rental Power project,” he said. Shahbaz also took a test drive of a cab. The Punjab chief minister. The cabs would be painted black and yellow and around 20,000 would be distributed among educated but unemployed youth in the first phase.
