Privatisation bid: PML-N govt’s policies part of anti-worker strategy, says Zardari

Asks PPP activists to act against any move that infringes upon the rights of the working class.

ISLAMABAD:

Former president and Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari asked party leaders on Saturday to keep watch on the privatisation policies of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government and raise their voice against any incident of crony capitalism, lack of transparency and layoffs.

“PML-N’s privatisation policies seem part of an anti-worker strategy… the PPP and its workers must not allow any policy that puts the working class out of work to be implemented,” he said in a meeting with office-bearers of PPP’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chapter.

The meeting also discussed the party’s organisational matters and its strategy for local bodies’ elections.



Zardari urged PPP workers to launch an intensive campaign for the upcoming local body elections in K-P to recover the ground it lost in the general elections last year, according to his spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar. He directed PPP leaders Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and Raza Rabbani to meet party workers in K-P to address their grievances and advised provincial leaders to pay attention to PPP’s membership drive.

Zardari said the PPP had accepted the results of the May 2013 general elections ‘despite obvious manipulation’ to allow democracy to flourish in the country.

The former president also paid special tribute to 9th grader Aitizaz Hasan, who was killed while thwarting a suicide attack on his school.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2014.