Siraj laments more taxes under IMF dictation

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Sirajul Haq has expressed sorrow over the reports that under the IMF's dictation, the PTI government will impose more taxes on the poor nation in the budget.

The government must reduce non-development expenditure to overcome fiscal deficit and support education and health sectors which are in dire straits, he said while addressing a meeting at Mansoorah on Tuesday.

Siraj lamented that every institution including parliament was weakened during the PTI era, adding that the country's three major political parties did nothing to strengthen democratic institutions. The PTI has become the most unpopular party in the history for the huge increase in inflation and poverty by indiscriminate implementation of IMF terms. He said the PTI failed to provide relief to people despite all its promises and lofty claims. Most of the meetings of the federal cabinet were held to check and victimize opposition leaders while no attention was given to solve national problems and provide genuine relief to the masses.

The JI Ameer lamented that those who came into power with the commitment to commit suicide rather than taking foreign loans have actually handcuffed the future generations to the slavery of the IMF and the World Bank by taking the largest loans in the history. He noted that the twenty years old mantra of the PTI was comfortably ditched under which the plundered national wealth was to be brought back from foreign banks. He lamented the tragic Islamophobic massacre of a Muslim family in Canada trampled to death by a Muslim-hater under his truck. He was concerned that the growing Islamophobia in the so-called civilized and law-abiding western countries has crossed all limits and become the new culture of the West.