PTI supporters stage nationwide protests
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) workers and supporters on Sunday took to the streets in various cities across the country to protest against rising inflation on the call of party chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan.
In Karachi, the protest was staged at Shahrah-e-Quaideen. A large number of police officials were deployed on the road leading from Sharea Faisal to Shahrah-e-Quaideen. Former governor Sindh Imran Ismail and other members of the PTI’s local leadership were present.
In Peshawar, the protest was staged in front of the main Hashtnagri Gate as party workers chanted slogans against the government, inflation and loadshedding. In Lahore, the protestors, which included a number of women, gathered at Liberty Chowk.
Similar protests were also held in Islamabad and the neighbouring Rawalpindi. At various protest sites, screens were set up to watch Imran’s virtual address, which he delivered a little after 10pm. In his speech, Imran said he had asked people to take to the streets against inflation “for their own good”.
He warned that more price hikes and inflation were in the offing and asked people to amp up their struggle against the “imported government”.
The former prime minister recalled that his government had “rolled out subsidies and distributed health cards despite being in the IMF programme”. “This government is in the IMF programme for two months and we remained in it for two and a half years,” the PTI chief said as he made the comparison.
Imran said his government had reduced petrol prices by Rs10 at a time when the IMF actually him to jack up fuel prices.
Hitting out at the PML-N-led coalition government, the ex-PM said the “real land mines” were laid by the Nawaz Sharif-led government when it left the power in 2018 with a $20 billion current account deficit.
