ISLAMABAD: Slamming the federal government for arresting the government employees instead of increasing their salaries, PPP Parliamentary Leader in the Senate, Sherry Rehman said the PTI government is at war with ordinary Pakistanis.
“These employees serve the country and are rightfully asking for a pay raise as inflation is going through the roof but instead “TabahiSarkar” is firing tear gas shells at them,” she said while condemning the shelling at the agitating government employees.
Sherry demanded that the arrested employees should be released immediately. “This government is at war with its own employees, with student groups, with PTDC, Steel Mill, PIA employees, labour unions, with independent media and working journalists, with lawyers, doctors and lady health workers, and of course the opposition,” she added.
She said the government by saying that it cannot increase their salaries is ridiculous because what exactly are they spending money on? Every government increases their salaries because inflation is going through the roof.
Sherry said people are struggling to make ends meet while pandemic has made things more difficult and instead of providing relief, this government is torturing people who are peacefully protesting for their pay raise. “We condemn the government’s stance as this chaos will result in civil unrest,” she added.
She said Pakistan witnessed 12-year high inflation at 14.6% in January 2020 and rural inflation is at a staggering 20 % with people unable to afford two square meals a day, adding to growing food insecurity in the country.
She said the prime minister has taken $12 billion in the form of loans in two and a half years, more than any debt any other government has taken, so the question arises where the money is going. “Do we see any relief for the people, see any development but only organisations being shut down and people being fired,” she asked. She questioned did Aiwan-e-Sadr become a library or did the Prime Minister House become a university. “Everything is much worse than before in Naya Pakistan,” she further added.
Sherry said the PPP has always increased government employees’ salaries and pensions as they have fixed salaries and one has to take inflation into account.
She said the PPP has the credit of increasing their salaries by 125%. Every other day this government is increasing prices, and burying their own commodity scams but they can’t give a regular pay raise to the employees that serve Pakistan. “Just Wednesday Nepra notified over Rs1.53 paisa per unit hike in power tariff. Then back-to-back petrol hikes have put an additional burden of Rs200 billion on the masses,” she said.
She said consumers now pay Rs47 extra on every litre of petrol and on top of all of this; the PTI government has failed to give an explanation over the Rs250 billion smuggling of oil from Iran.
She said during PPP’s tenure, crude oil was +$140, yet the situation was nowhere close to what it is now. Despite a historical dip in international oil prices, she said the PTI government has increased petrol prices by 2.5-4.6% for the third time in 31 days. “How can the government justify all this? Keeping all this in mind, are the government employees not right in asking for a pay increase?” she questioned. She said in 2018, there were 31.3% Pakistanis living below the poverty line. She said over the past 29 months, the percentage of Pakistanis living below the poverty line has gone up to 40%. She said Pakistanis living below the line of poverty have gone up from 69 million in 2018 to 87 million. “Does the government have an action plan to counter this or they are only focusing on the opposition witch-hunting,” she asked.