Shehbaz vows to oppose hike in petroleum prices
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President and National Assembly Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday lashed out at the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government over the rocketing surge of petroleum prices, vowing to vehemently oppose it in the parliament.
In the backdrop of the reports that the government was mulling further taxes next month, the opposition leader said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was trampling upon the basic rights of the people enshrined in the constitution by continuously imposing heavy taxes amid unbridled inflation.
Asserting his party’s resolve to protect the inviolable economic rights of the people, Shehbaz said he would stand like an iron wall against those who sought to usurp them. He said it absolutely made no sense as to why the government was bent on increasing the taxes on the pretext of remedying the grievances of the very people suffering inflation.
The further increase of Rs7-9 in the prices of petroleum products would hammer the last nail in the coffin of the masses already murdered by PTI’s economic terrorism,” he added. He said he had been repeatedly warning that the incumbent government must be removed to control the damage of economic destruction “before it is too late”.
Read 'Tsunami of inflation': Opposition lambasts PM Imran for petroleum price hike
“PTI government’s resort to mini-budgets betrays its intellectual bankruptcy and failure to formulate a viable economic plan for the country,” Shehbaz pointed out, adding that political and economic turmoil was pulling the state down to the direction of a “failed state” as it stood on the precipice of irredeemable catastrophe.
PTI unleashing tsunami of inflation
Meanwhile, reacting to the reports of the government's plan to slap further taxes, PML-N Secretary Information Marriyum Aurangzeb slammed the ruling party, saying the taxes would render the prices of everyday conveniences beyond the reach of the common man.
In a statement, she claimed gas will be even more expensive in the next month and will not even be available.
The former information minister said: “Imran Khan has no strategy to resolve the economic crisis his incompetence and corruption had created. His corruption and incompetence had broken all records of inflation rate in Pakistan.”
“The only way to end all these problems is to oust this tyrannical government,” she said, adding that PM Imran’s “grotesque lip-service” was no longer enough.