The violent protests in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) should be eye-opener for the government that is hell-bent to increase price hike, inflation and tax burden blindly on dictation of IMF, said Pasban Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman Altaf Shakoor here yesterday.
He warned that these protests may spread to whole country as the people have already been fed up with the policies of the government to over-squeeze them with unbearably high energy tariffs, price hike and over taxation. He said for the inflation-hit people now enough is enough and it is high time for the government to learn lesson and reconsider its illogical economic policies.
Altaf Shakoor said the foreign loans have never resolved the economic issues of any nation, as these loans come with many strings attached and the lenders also send their own people to be appointed as finance ministers and state bank governors. This is a deadly debt trap which results in a long term economic down slide. He said our country is a textbook example of the debt trap but the government is not ready to correct its path.
He said food inflation in our country is highest in the region. People are protesting against high prices of wheat flour and other eatables. Poverty and hunger is on the rise in country and upbeat price hike, joblessness and inflation are further fuelling them. The government is clueless about how to tackle these issues and provide some breathing space to the poor masses. They have only one solution: Increase energy tariffs, bank interest rate and taxes. These measures alone could never resolve the core issue unless they are coupled with increasing production, creating more jobs, slashing food prices and increasing social security net.
He said agriculture and irrigation sectors are the areas which could change the fate of our country by making it a grain basket. He said new dams, reservoirs and canals can make millions acres of of barren lands cultivable. With drip irrigation and saline water farming we can turn our arid zones into lush green fields. However, all this requires sincere efforts on the part of our government and that are missing in our country. Improving education and technical training systems could create a huge trained workforce that can be sent to other countries for earning the badly needed foreign exchange. However, again this is matter of prioritizing our policies which in again the domain of our government.Altaf Shakoor said that the revenue generated by the megacity Karachi could be easily doubled if the government provides it with the required infrastructure development facilities. The megacity needs true urban facilities of education, healthcare, public transport, housing and development of expressways, ports and industrial estates. Many cities even smaller than Karachi now enjoy underground railway systems but our megacity still rely on Chingchi rickshaws. The megacity needs new technical universities and colleges to train our raw manpower.
Altaf Shakoor asked the government to learn lesson from the ongoing civil unrest in the AJK and reconsider its blind policies of increasing energy tariffs, food inflation and taxation; otherwise, the protests of the poor people would spread to whole country like a forest fire.
