‘Free, fair polls a must to end political chaos’

LAHORE: Tanzeem-e-Islami ameer Shujauddin Shaikh has said that free, fair and transparent elections must be held to end the political chaos and whichever party wins the elections should be supported by all other political rivals to bring country out of economic crisis.

He urged upon political rivals and state institutions that they should reach a consensus for political and economic stability.Country is currently facing economic default and severe political chaos, requiring urgently bringing political stability to dig ourselves out of the economic quagmire, he said addressing a meeting on Friday.

The common man, he said, has been struggling hard for two square meals is now suffering from starvation. Factories are being shut down due to rising input cost and if the situation is not controlled then the fiend of unemployment would destroy everything in its path.

He demanded that country’s economy should be strengthened by exploiting the vast mineral wealth to get out of the mire of usurious loans. Allah Almighty has blessed Pakistan with abundant metallic and non-metallic mineral resources, including large deposits of mineral oil and natural gas, coal, iron ore, gold, silver, copper, salt, precious stones and construction and decorative stones.

The country has the world’s largest reserves of different types of pure salt, but unfortunately, due to the incompetence and dishonesty of the rulers during the last century, they were unable to strengthen the economy by getting valuable exchange from these blessings given by Allah. He noted that in a recent meeting with the Pakistani ambassador, top executives of a US company expressed interest in investing $200 million in mining, processing and selling the pink salt under its own brand.

The Pink Salt found in Pakistan has a market of about 14 billion dollars per year in the world, while Pakistan gets only a meagre 70 million dollars per year from the export of this priceless gift of nature. Companies of India and some Middle Eastern countries are making billions of dollars by extracting pure salt from the mines of Khewra and selling it worldwide under their own brand. He demanded the government that the agreements for mining, processing, packaging, export and sale of salt and other minerals in Pakistan with all international companies should be discussed in the parliament.