Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Sunday criticised Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif-led federal government for its “anti-people” policies.
“Instead of spending funds on charitable projects, the current government is running behind colourful buses,” the PPP chairman said while addressing a gathering at a mass marriages ceremony organised by Bahria Town in Lahore.
The PPP chairman accused the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of slapping its label on the projects conceived by the PPP.
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“The PML-N is renaming the projects initiated by the PPP and re-launching them with its own name,” he said, adding that the country was in dire need of charitable organisations.
Bilawal claimed that the ruling party had imposed fresh taxes of Rs 40 billion on the poor without the parliament’s endorsement, thereby increasing the rate of inflation and unemployment in the country.
Criticising the prime minister’s Rs 341 billion Kisan Package, Bilawal said the poor farmers were being neglected by the government and nothing was being done for providing them relief. The PPP chairman urged the federal government to spend more on food, health and education for the poor than what it was currently spending.
Bilawal’s speech comes in the wake of rising criticism against his own government in Sindh over poor management of health and food facilities across the rural areas of the province, especially the famine-stricken areas of Tharparkar and Mithi.
On Saturday, representative of farmers’ bodies in Sindh pledged to protest against the pricing issue with the Sindh government and the sugar mills. At a luncheon in Hyderabad, the farmers’ representative bodies briefed Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MNA Arif Alvi about the issue and sought the party’s support for their demands.
“Protest is the only way to solve this issue because the [Sindh] government is playing partisan with the millers, especially the Omni group,” Alvi said, referring to a company that controls several sugar mills allegedly owned by PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari.