Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali on Friday told the Sindh Assembly that the provincial government would consider increasing salaries of government employees in the next budget.
Concluding the pre-budget debate, he admitted that the minimum salary of a government employee was not enough for subsistence, but the provincial government had to take a decision in that regard keeping in view its resources. Shah said that around Rs50 billion was spent for payment of salaries and retired employees’ pension, excluding employees of local government institutions.
Slating the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led federal government for “not considering Sindh part of Pakistan”, he remarked that the province was paying the price of “inefficiency and incompetence of the Centre”. He said the federal government was not spending any money for the uplift of Sindh, and asked as to why such injustices was being done with the province. He said the federal government was continuously giving lesser funds out of Sindh’s share under the National Finance Commission.
The chief minister said that the federal government was incompetent and unable to run the country’s affairs in an effective manner due to which inflation and unemployment were on the rise. “The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had projected economic growth rate of 1.5pc for Pakistan while it is 5pc and 12.5pc in Bangladesh and India, respectively,” he said.
Mr Shah said that the PTI-led federal government had completely failed to perform and that was why their vote bank was getting decreased day-by-day.
He said that PTI’s defeats in by-elections spoke volumes of their ‘incompetence and unpopularity”.
The CM said that Sindh had been given Rs527 billion (or 95pc) from its share in the divisible tax pool in 2017-18 by the then PPP government and 86 per cent by the then PML-N federal government, while the province got only 70pc in 2019-2020 from the PTI-led government.
