Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo, President PPP Central Punjab, in a statement issued from here today expressed total solidarity of the Party with the demands of low paid employees of APCA and urged the government to accept their genuine demands as per understanding handed out earlier by the government representatives. It should adopt the habit of keeping its words instead of strengthening the impression of its notoriety of not fulfilling its promises, he stated.
He said that this government was identified as anti-farmers, labour, low paid government employees, have-nots. On the contrary, its largesse to the capitalists and the industrialists were being showered even without asking the same by them, he observed.
He recalled that the government granted exemptions of billions of rupees in custom duties to the capitalists but increased GST on petroleum products to squeeze the poor dry from 15% to 22% at time when prices of petrol was reduced first time and from 22% to 27% when prices were slashed of the commodity for the second time. It was the perfect example of duping the people by giving one hand and taking away the same with the other hand, he observed.
He maintained that this sleight of the hand of the Finance Minister, Ishaq Dar, with the poor of the country was a tyrannical activity by any measure demanding that the poor should be given relief by improving the delivery of services instead of serving as conduit in multiplying their maladies of torturous proportion.
He pointed out that the rice, potatoes and sugar growers had been protesting against the step-motherly treatment of the government but all fell on the deaf ear of the government because nothing had been done to mitigate the prevailing economic genocide of the farmers.
He recalled that the track record of the PPP Governments in the past clearly established that it increased the salaries of the government employees much more than the other successive governments in the country put together. He added that it was the credit of the PPP previous government that it regularized thousands of employees and thus gave security to families of the poor servants who were suffering from acute sense of insecurity.
He further said that the PPP had warned the government to desist from laying off the government employees on political grounds because the PPP government provided the poor jobs keeping in view the rules of recruitment and merit and treat them as political appointee was extremely unfair.
He mentioned that the PPP made the labour stakeholders in the 85 Public Corporations by offering them 12.5% shares under the Benazir Employees Stock Option which was unprecedented. The PPP government also increased the death grant from one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand for the labour and eliminated the limits of granting financial assistance to the two daughters of the labour. Such amount was also increased from Rs. 50, 000 to 100, 000.
Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo said that the PPP being the Party of the poor would continue to do the politics of the less privileged segments of the society who had been ignored by other governments but PPP governments held them in high esteem.
He said that the PPP considered the poor people of the country the real stakeholders as being the final arbiter adding the PPP empowered them under the leadership of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto by granting right of vote to all and sundry on the basis of adult franchise.
