Basic needs: PPP demands 20 per cent raise in salaries

Demands rise in salaries of government employees and pensioners.

LAHORE: “Finance Minister Ishaq Dar should announce a 20 per cent in salaries of government employees and pensioners because they have been badly affected by the unprecedented hike in the price of food items,” Mian Mazoor Wattoo, Punjab president of Pakistan Peoples Party, said on Sunday.

He said withdrawal of subsidies under directions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had caused spiralling inflation. He said prices of food items had risen upto four times the rates during PPP’s government. “The PPP government gave government servants substantial raises in salaries,” he said. He said the incumbent government’s policies so far had been anti-poor. He said the finance minister should meet representatives of government employees to work out a mutually agreed formula regarding increase of salaries.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2014.