KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday said he wondered that at a time when people did not have food to eat; no clothes to wear and they were deprived of shelter as well, ‘selected’ Prime Minister Imran Khan had the ‘audacity’ to ask people to stop worrying and be patient. In a statement, he said 50 percent people were living below poverty line during the times of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf, and now the country had landed in the same situation by virtue of the policies of ‘selected’ prime minister. Bilawal said that ‘incompetent’ government’s economic policies had ‘wrecked’ each and every household in the country. He said the very fact that wheat was available but flour was expensive, sugarcane was available but sugar prices were out of the reach of common man was enough to prove that Imran Khan was ‘patronizing’ the mafias. PPP chairman claimed that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government would not provide any relief to the salaried class or pensioners in the national budget for the financial year, 2021-22. “Their only aim is to exaggerate the GDP figures,” he said, and added the reason why the ruling party was boasting about economic growth so much was that it had no intention to give relief to the poor in the budget. “If the country’s GDP rate had really improved, youth would not have been wandering here and there in search for jobs,” Bilawal said, and asked what kind of economic development was this in which those who were employed had now become jobless. “Under the PTI government, either every fifth person has lost his job or his income has reduced,” he said, and claimed that no other government, barring that of PPP, had made such kind of a budget in which relief was provided to the salaried class, pensioners as well as people belonging to other segments of the society. PPP chairman said that textile sector was facing a crisis these days as cotton prices were the highest in the last 11 years. He was of the view that if Pakistan’s economy was to be saved, people would have to get rid of the present government.
