It is first govt that failed in 8 months: Siraj

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) ameer Senator Sirajul Haq has said the PTI government is the first government in Pakistan’s history whose policies have collapsed within eight months. Despite financial support from Saudi Arabia and UAE, the government could not stabilise the country’s economy, he said this while talking to a delegation of financial experts headed by president of JI’s Economic Committee and ex-member FBR, Sarfraz Ahmed Khan, at Mansoorah on Thursday.

Sirajul Haq said the government talked too much of accountability but not a penny of the plundered money had been recovered. He said the amnesty schemes had proved a failure even in the past as it was a tactic to whiten the black money. He said each government had provided this facility to the people amassing wealth through unfair means. He said that while in opposition, the PTI leadership had been deadly opposed to amnesty but was now talking of its merits.

He said the party making the nation to dream of development and prosperity had moved the wheel of economy backward. The poor had already been starving but their plight had worsened now. He said the government had raised the prices of electricity, gas and POL to an extent that the common man was finding it hard to make both ends meet. Over and above that, he said, the ministers were counselling the people to have only one loaf at a time which was rubbing salt on their wounds. Sirajul Haq said from the very first day, the PTI government had been blaming the previous rulers of all problems and it seemed that even at the end of its five-year term, the government would be harping on the same tune.

Due to the government policies, small industrial units had been closed which was adding to unemployment. He said the exporters were finding it hard to compete in the international market and the exports were coming down. He said that the government was exploiting the whole nation only to secure the twelve billion dollar IMF loan. He advised the government to abandon the interest based economic system and adopt the Islamic economic system and assured that this change would bring about miraculous results.

Meanwhile, JI secretary general Liaquat Baloch has said the JI would never agree to any move to protect the corrupt individuals or families.

Addressing the participants of JI central workshop at Mansoora here on Thursday, he said JI would organise the masses and involve them in its drive against corruption. He said the NAB seemed to have forgotten the 436 people named in the Panama Leaks.

Baloch said PTI’s style of government had come to fore within a short time and it was fast heading towards failure. He said the establishment had confined politics to narrow personal or family interests due to which the feudal lords, capitalists, vaderas and political groups had been reduced to the pawns of establishment and the entire system was in establishment’s hand. He said if Nawaz Sharif or Imran Khan, as Prime Minister, deviated from the script or given policy, they and their party were in hot waters. He said the government had failed to recover four hundred billion dollars of the plundered wealth lying abroad.