Senate of the people

This refers to the news report, ‘Senate resolves to review Indus Waters Treaty’ (March 7). The report also mentioned a resolution passed by senators, calling upon the government to enhance profit rates on National Savings Schemes. This resolution can rightly be called a ‘public interest resolution’. The National Assembly should also wake up to the growing needs of senior citizens, who have nowhere to go except deposit their life-time savings in NSS certificates. Their rates of profit have been continuously falling for the last many years. At present, it is the government that is making profit on such savings. Old depositors are consequently filling the bottomless coffers of the state while inflation has wiped out the expected advantages to the endangered species called the senior citizen.

The government should enhance profit rates retrospectively to offset the impact of inflation. It should know that this issue is related to good governance and that poor governance fuels terrorism. The corruption-terror nexus has to be broken for a stable, peaceful, prosperous and secure Pakistan.

B A Malik

Islamabad