Pakistan Muslim League senior central leader and Deputy Prime Minister Pervaiz Elahi has said that if the Sharifs’ N-League government had concentrated more on improving the lives of the poor people of the province, controlling crime and overhauling educational system instead of getting the IRI survey done in its favor, the circumstances would have been quite different.
Talking to the party leaders at his residence on Friday, Pervaiz Elahi stressed that the popularity of political parties was judged by the peoples’ support on the elections day and not by survey reports because people vote on the basis of performance, not surveys. He stated that in 2008, a similar survey had been carried out prior to the elections but contrary to the survey report, PML-Q had secured the maximum votes in Punjab and was number two all over Pakistan in terms of votes bagged.
Elahi said that N-League had turned Punjab into a financially bankrupt province and according to a report of the State Bank of Pakistan, Punjab was heavily indebted.
“Whereas when we left the government, the province was running at a surplus of Rs 100 billion,” he pointed out. He said that according to another report of the State Bank, growth rate during his party’s tenure in 2007 was 8 per cent whereas in 2012 it stands at a meager 1.8 percent. Yet another report, also from the State Bank, states that Elahi’s government had utilized as much as 98 percent of the development funds whereas Shahbaz’s government had utilized only 43 percent of the said funds, he mentioned.
He further said that during their party’s tenure, politics revolved around the common man while the present government wasted billions of rupees on phony schemes like Sasti Roti, Tandoor scheme, Ashiana housing scheme, Laptop scheme, Daanish schools and Lahore Metro Bus Service. He said laptops distributed by the Punjab government were being sold at Hafeez Centre on the very day they were distributed. “What else should be mentioned about the very good performance of the Punjab government?” he commented. “The doctors, nurses, teachers and low paid employees are protesting on the roads for their rights almost every other day but there is no one to address their issues. Crime rate in the province has increased by 33 per cent and spurious drugs are readily available in hospitals,” he added.