‘No proposal in budget for poverty alleviation’

ISLAMABAD: Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Defence Production, Senator Abdul Qadar has slammed the government for budgetary proposals alleging that no significant relief was proposed for the common man and poor segment of the society.

In a statement, the senator said that 44.7 percent population was living below the poverty level and as such poverty-alleviation should have been government’s top priority. “The government should follow China’s formula to achieve results for poverty elimination”, he said.

Saying that the budgetary proposals give no formula to control poverty, Abdul Qadar observed that finding solution to problems of the common and poor man was never priority of the government.

He demanded that the government should fix Rs50,000 as minimum monthly wages while big landlords be taxed while giving exemptions to small farmer particularly possessing agriculture land upto two acres.

He said the government should also focus on promotion of the agriculture sector, saying that provision of quality seed, fertilizers and pesticides was key to achieving desired results from cultivation of valuable crops.

Moreover, the senator alleged that the government also failed to achieve tax collection target of Rs14200 billion due to FBR’s poor performance. “This is a fact that the FBR never achieves targets of revenue collections”, he said.