Govt economic team brings country on verge of disaster: Siraj

ISLAMABAD: Jamaat-e-Islamai (JI) ameer, Senator Sirajul Haq has said that the incompetent economic team of the incumbent government has brought the national economy at the verge of disaster placing the poor masses at ventilator who are struggling for their survivor.

He was addressing a day-long seminar on the ‘National Budget’ organised by his party here. JI naib ameer Liaquat Baloch, secretary general Amirul Azeem, President Kisan Board Chaudhry Nisar Ahmad, economic experts Dr Shahid Hassan Siddique and Dr Asad Zaman, banking expert Dr Attique Zafar, Professor Anwar Shah (Agriculture), health expert and President Pakistan Medical Association Dr Muhammad Arshad, Nazim-e-Aala Islami Jamiat-e-Taluba (IJT) and others also addressed the seminar.

Sirajul Haq said that Pakistan security and sovereignty would be facing threats if Pakistan does not come out of the clutches of the IMF.

The United States was using the Fund as a tool for creating political anarchy in the country.

The JI said that Jamaat would announce its future plan of action on June 23 maintaining that the opposition would not allow passage of the federal budget in its present form and government would have to make amendments to it.

Talking about experts who prepared the budget document, Sirajul Haq said that two non-elected people were deciding fate of over 220 million population of the country whereas the elected government would be answerable to their voters. “They will leave the country as soon as the complete their job of destruction of national economy, to re-joint an international institution,” he said.

The speakers said the government had announced the federal budget which is based on advanced conditions of the IMF saying the budget presented on June 11 was also violation of Article 3 of the Constitution which ensures provision education to the children and all other facilities to the poor.

They said the presented Government inherited economy in bad shape, the situation of which was deteriorating further due to high interest rate of banks and ignoring plight of the poor and middle class with minimum allocations for the social sector, increase in foreign loans in the last 10 months and increase in budget and trade deficit.

Speakers also demanded doing away with the Benazir Income Support Programme which was making the poor as beggar and instead release interest-free bank loans to them. They also observed that the government should withdraw Rs5,000 currency note which they said was being used for money-laundering.

Dr Shahid Hassan Siddiqui said that America was using IMF and FATF against Pakistan’s interests. He said the PTI leadership was also not read fulfill its promise that a tax system based on justice would be introduced. Nisar Ahmad, advocate, said the present government was paying no attention on the agriculture sector due to which yield of crops was going down.

Dr. Muhammad Arsahd said that his association was working on ‘Health for All’ programme for the masses.