Tariq Saeed Peshawar
Responding to the call of all Pakistan trades alliance, complete shutter down was observed in Peshawar and other parts of the province Thursday to resent the highly inflated electricity bills and long hours of unscheduled and unannounced power outage.
All Bazaars in the provincial metropolis were closed where the traders’ community and various business organizations took to streets and chanted to express their anger over the unprecedented hike in the power bills in the history of the country.
The traders during the protest processions taken out at various parts of the city highly criticized the government for expressing helplessness to provide relief to the masses owing to strict International Monetary conditions.
In fact the citizens, already reeling under runaway inflation, have been protesting across the country for the last six days, setting electricity bills on fire while demanding the government to withdraw the hike in the tariffs.
The business community came hard on what they termed totally helpless and incompetent government which they said had made the living of the people almost impossible. They were chanting slogans as, “corrupt and incompetent government unacceptable” and “IMF ka Jo yaar he, Ghaddar he”.
They also lambasted the caretaker Finance Minister Dr. ShamshadAkhtar who showed helplessness to slash taxes on inflated electricity bills, during her meeting with the senators on Wednesday saying the fiscal position was so tied up under the IMF agreement that there was not a penny in coffers for giving any subsidy.
