KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has asked the Punjab government to stop strangulating the poor people of Punjab economically and diverting public resources to things like Rs 162 billion Orange Line and other wasteful projects.
“It is shameful that Punjab government has pushed the peasantry into unending protests and compelled more than 6,000 employees of Rural Health Support Programme (RHSP) to hold sit-ins in Lahore and elsewhere amid scorching heat wave by depriving them of livelihood,” Bilawal said in a statement on Thursday while expressing his solidarity with the farmers and RHSP who are up in protest in Lahore.
One of the peasants, Samiullah of Kabirwala, died during the demonstration of the Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI) in Lahore while 6,000 employees of the RHSP, mostly women, are threatened of retrenchment by the Punjab government.
Most of the protesting farmers under the umbrella of PKI came from Multan, Lodhran, Kabirwala, Bahawalpur and other cities of south Punjab. The PPP chairman warned the Punjab government to desist from repeating its history of always snatching livelihood from the people whenever it came to power through deceiving people and stealing the elections.
“The PPP won’t allow it to grab the rights of the poor farmers and the employees of the PHSP and supports their legitimate struggle for achieving their rights,” he added. Bilawal pointed out that Sharif brothers were spending a mammoth amount of Rs 162 billion on the Orange Line Train project to serve just 100,000 commuters while only meager funds of Rs 59 and Rs 54 billion were allocated for total education and health budget.
Supporting the genuine demands of the protesting farmers and health workers in Punjab, the PPP chairman asked the Punjab government to redress their grievances and accept their demands without any delay or the PPP and other democratic parties would join their protests and take them to the logical end.
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