PESHAWAR: Pakistan Peoples Party has reacted to reports that the government has recently waived billions of rupees of liabilities of a few industrialists in addition to writing off late payment surcharge for the past seven years through a presidential ordinance and warned to raise the issue in and outside the assemblies.

In a joint statement, the party’s parliamentary leader in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Sher Azam Wazir and MPAs Ahmad Karim Kundi and Ms Nighat Orakzai said that President Arif Alvi had recently promulgated the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (Amendment) Ordinance 2019 to waive half of the outstanding liabilities of fertiliser, textile, power generation and compressed natural gas sectors.

“The PPP will raise objection on the issue in and outside the assembly as it is contrary to the tall claims of Prime Minister Imran Khan who always promised to recover the looted public wealth, but failed to fulfil his commitments and rather changed his opinion through U-turns,” the PPP lawmakers alleged.

They said that waiving outstanding liabilities of influential industrialists was meant to burden the poor people with additional taxes. They said that such steps showed that the prime minister was not sincere to recover the looted public wealth.

The PPP lawmakers claimed that Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s popularity graph was fast declining as its government could not meet its targets and had created a sense of deprivation among the masses. The PPP, they claimed, would sweep the next general elections due to the services its leaders had rendered in the past tenures.

They demanded of the government to fulfil its commitments with the people and recover the plundered national money through impartial accountability process.

Meanwhile, Nighat Orakzai, who is also the provincial president of PPP women wing, told a press conference at Peshawar Press Club on Sunday that the government was resorting to victimisation of the opposition leaders.

She said that the government should ensure across-the-board accountability. She said that shifting of Asif Zardari’s sister Faryal Talpur from hospital to prison after midnight proved that the rulers were influencing NAB for its political objectives.

The MPA said that doctors had advised complete medical check-up of former president Asif Zardari, but he was not allowed to get proper treatment. The PPP, she said, would raise its voice against the injustices at all forums against the government.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2019