Siraj wants equity, justice in society

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Senator Sirajul Haq has said the JI wanted across-the-board accountability and an interest-free economic system in which the poor and the rich were provided equal opportunities to earn.

He said any society depriving the poor of their due rights could not survive for long, adding that if the affluent people wanted to protect their wealth they would have to give the poor the right to live. He said a system in which poor were crushed economically and the wealth of the rich multiplied within days, was not acceptable at all.

Talking to JI Kisan leader Arsalan Khan Khakwani, who called on him at Mansoora on Friday, Sirajul Haq said that Pakistan’s real issue was not the dearth of resources. Instead, it was the inequitable distribution of resources besides the concentration of wealth in a few hands. Islam, he said, enjoined the circulation of wealth. However, he said, the people who remained in power in the country, had been increasing their wealth through unfair use of their political and official influence. He said the government did not have any mechanism to recover the plundered wealth because if the plunderers were still sitting in the government, who would take them to accountability, he posed a question.

Sirajul Haq said the JI wanted across the board accountability and an interest-free economic system in which the poor and the rich were provided equal opportunities to earn.

He stressed for making workers partners in the profits of profit earning institutions/ factories and the farmers be made partners in the farm produce to improve their lot. He said that revolutionary measures were required to end the economic exploitation of the poor and added that the primary step in this direction was the elimination of interest-based economy in line with the Constitution of the country and the introduction of the system of Zakat and Ushr.

Sirajul Haq said that locusts had destroyed crops over vast areas but the government was not taking the matter seriously. He advised the masses to be determined to save the crops from locusts and their future generations from corruption mafia.