Call to tackle rising cost of living

LAHORE
The federal government should introduce far-reaching economic and social reforms in the coming budget to tackle the rising cost of living and unemployment in the country.
The irrational gap between the rich and poor in society should be eliminated and the government should raise the wages and salaries in addition to the old age pension of workers by at least 50 percent in the federal budget. The government should evolve a progressive policy to raise the efficiency of the national public utilities including electricity and railways to provide better services to the citizens instead of their proposed privatisation at the behest of the IMF.
It was pointed out that the government should develop a cheaper source of generation of electricity through hydel, gas and coal fired thermal power stations in the public sector on war-footing basis to overcome the energy shortfall.
These views were expressed by economic and electric engineer experts and trade union representatives including Syed Tanzeem Hussain Naqvi, former Member Power Wapda and General Secretary of All Pakistan Workers Confederation Khurshid Ahmed, General Secretary along with Rana Hassan Muhammad, General Secretary PTCL Employees Union, Akbar Ali Khan, President National Bank of Pakistan Employees Union and other representatives of trade unions.
On this occasion, I A. Rehman, Secretary General Human Rights Commission of Pakistan announced that the privatisation of public utilities at the behest of the World Bank and IMF would be neither in the interest of the nation nor for the workforce.
The government should place this national issue before the parliament and Senate of Pakistan and should improve their efficiency of its management without political interference since the privatisation of various industrial units resulted in closure of many enterprises and sale of their precious lands to earn profits and mass retrenchment of the workforce.
He expressed complete support to the struggle of the working class against the privatisation and urged the government to hold a meaningful dialogue with the recognised representatives of workers.