Sirajul Haq asks PM, cabinet to donate to corona fund

LAHORE:Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Senator Sirajul Haq has stressed that it was time that all capitalists should make sacrifice for the nation.

He demanded Prime Minister Imran Khan donate at least 10 per cent of his wealth to coronavirus fund and force his cabinet ministers and party leaders to do the same instead of asking the nation for donations. It was high time the PTI government legislate for imposing taxes on the rich and exempting the poor and middle class, he said while addressing a meeting of party office-bearers at Mansoora through a video link on Thursday.

Sirajul Haq said the government could never be able to fight the coronavirus alone, and it was the government’s national duty to take along entire opposition and the nation in this vital struggle for protecting the country from the deadly pandemic. He warned that a national consensus on the strategy to deal with the calamity and a national action plan like that was evolved against terrorism was the need of the hour, adding that the national strategy could not be evolved unless the government shun the political division and move forward with the conciliation and consensus.

“Prime Minister Imran Khan must come out of the shell of his egotism, and shun the insistence of taking solo flight on a vital issue at the crucial juncture of national history,” he said. Sirajul Haq said the government departments and trained professionals were the best source to distribute the relief amount and goods to the deserving and the destitute, warning that doing this job through any political force or group would never ensure the transparency and the efficacy of the distribution process, and would result in earning bad name and failure for the government.

He alleged that the manner in which Prime Minister had saved the skins of his ministers involved in huge sugar and flour scandal, by just shuffling their portfolios, was a proof that he was continuing with the same corrupt practices of previous governments and sheltering those influential capitalists and their cronies who win elections through money and then multiply their money to continue in politics for generations.

He said the relief package of Rs12,000 per family to be distributed among them in four monthly installments of Rs3,000, was peanuts compared with the inflation and the economic conditions, demanding the prime minister raise it to at least Rs15,000 per month to enable the poor to make the both ends meet with least dignity. He said the government had always claimed for working for the poor but it had not built any database of poor families living below poverty line. He demanded the government control the prices of essential commodities and give at least 50 per cent subsidy on basic needs.