Obscene waste

Never has one witnessed such an intense and unanimous sense of anguish, anger, and aversion amongst the ordinary citizens, against the wasteful squandering of state resources, extracted from the poor, and gifted on a platter to please and pamper the rich. A proposed, but now withdrawn, wasteful vehicle extravaganza and an almost 300 per cent hike in parliamentarians’ salaries are the two most recent examples of this wasteful imprudence. Did it never occur to our parliamentarians that millions of workers are not even being paid the inadequate legal minimum wage? Pakistan ought to relinquish wasteful indulgences and make a law that the salary of government officials will be no more than five times the minimum legal wage notified for an ordinary worker. Pakistan’s progress is deeply dependent on the wellbeing of its ordinary citizens.

Naeem Sadiq

Karachi