PPP holds rallies against price hike in various cities

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) staged demonstrations against price-hike in various cities across the country on Friday. Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari expressed his gratitude to the people of Pakistan for staging demonstrations against the increase in prices of petroleum products and food inflation on his appeal.

“The people of Pakistan do not stand with Imran Khan and Khan has no right to be the prime minister without public support,” he said in a statement. He said he was also thankful to the party’s local organisations and jiyalas for organising protest in different cities of the country.

Bilawal said the protest rallies, held in Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Sindh, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, were a charge-sheet against the government. Meanwhile, the PPP Islamabad City and District Islamabad and its affiliates held a protest rally in front of the National Press Club Islamabad.

“The people are facing tsunami of inflation, rising power and gas tariffs, high petroleum price, and rising unemployment due to incompetent selected government,” said PPP Secretary General Nayyer Hussain Bokhari while addressing the rally. He said the rupee was depreciating continuously and the dollar was flying high. “The incompetent rulers have done nothing but to make people unemployed and demolish their houses,” he said.

He also criticised the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) for the current situation, saying that if its plan had been implemented, the PPP would have been with it. “The PDM secretary general is also responsible for the current situation, who linked the long march with resignations,” he added. The PPP staged protest rallies, staged sit-in and blocked the National

Highways against inflation. The party workers, led by MPAs, MNAs, and Sindh cabinet members, held rallies in Hyderabad, Sukkur, Khairpur, Sanghar, Mirpurkhas, Thatta, Umarkot, Ghotki, Jamshoro, Nawabshah, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, Larkana, Badin and other districts of Sindh.

Addressing rallies, MNA Khursheed Shah, PPP Sindh President Nisar Khuhro, Provincial Minister Nasir Shah and others said that inept government of the PTI had nothing done for betterment of people. They said flour, sugar and petrol had become thrice costly and beyond the reach of the poor.

Rejecting PM Khan's claim that Pakistan was the cheapest country in compression to rest of the world, they said even Afghanistan, Bangladesh and other regional countries were cheap than Pakistan. They said the PPP was the only party that raised voice against the PTI-IMF budget.

The PPP activists blocked the Ratodero Road for traffic and raised slogans against the PTI government. They also vent their anger at unemployment as well as the alleged injustice done to Sindh by the PTI government.

In Sukkur, the PPP workers got divided in two groups over the issue of speeches at a sit-in at the city bypass Sukkur and they used sticks, stones, bricks against each other. At least 12 workers were injured in clash. Khursheed Shah and police helped restore calm later on.

Central Information Secretary PPPP and MNA Shazia Atta Marri said Prime Minister Imran Khan was not only the leader of liars but he was also mastermind of lies. She said the MQM and PTI attempted to make fool of the Karachi people.

In Lahore, a large number of PPP jiyalas Friday staged demonstration against price-hike and grilled the PTI government over its inability to deliver. The protest demonstration was held at Charing Cross, The Mall, in which senior party leaders including President Lahore chapter Chaudhry Aslam Gill, former president Lahore Samina Khalid Ghurki, Rana Farooq Saeed Khan, Haji Aziz-ur-Rehman Chan, former MPA Dr Ziaullah Khan Bangash, Faisal Mir, Arif Khan, Tahir Ghalib and others participated.

Aslam Gill said the days of the PTI government were numbered now. He urged jiyalas to get united to send the rulers packing. He also congratulated the party leadership over successful gathering at Charing Cross.

In Sukkur, commenting on Prime Minister Imran Khan's speech in Karachi, she said the federal government had been collecting billions of rupees revenue from Karachi, but it did not give any mega development project to that metropolitan.

She said the PTI-led government should tell people about any single hospital in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa where heart patients would be provided free of cost best health facilities like NICVD in Sindh province. She said Prime Minister Imran Khan should be held accountable for the corruption of Rs40 billion in the COVID-19 fund.