Govt’s BISP step attack on poor women: Bilawal Butto Zardari

ISLAMABAD: Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Thursday strongly criticised the government for removing 820,165 women beneficiaries from the list of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) and termed it an attack on the economic empowerment of poverty-ridden women in the country.

“The PTI government is doling out government benefits only to the moneyed class and seems more interested in unleashing poverty and unemployment in the country,” said Bilawal in a statement while reacting to the removal of 8 lakh beneficiaries of the Benazir Income Support Programme. .

He said the PTI government had taken a total U-turn on its pre-election promises of providing 10 million jobs and 5 million houses. Instead, it is overseeing mass unemployment, mass homelessness in the name of ‘anti-encroachment’, and multiplying poverty through its ruthless anti-poor policies,” he added.

He said the federal cabinet was guilty of this economic onslaught on the poor. “Their silence as people’s homes are destroyed, as millions lose their jobs, and as women will now have to worry how to feed their children, is criminal,” he said.

He said the BISP was a lifeline to those women who often had to sacrifice their own dinners in order to ensure their children didn’t sleep hungry.

“This assault on the livelihoods of the poor and on Pakistan’s only social safety net goes to show the callousness of the PTI regime,” he said.

Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said every member of the government, who remained silent on this step, was equally complicit in this economic murder of poor people.

The PPP chairman warned the government to immediately withdraw the decision else his party would fiercely oppose it at every forum and would not allow its anti-poor and anti-women policies to be implemented.