Unhappy always: Reduction of petroleum prices a publicity gimmick: Qureshi

PTI vice-chairman condemns the arrest of OGDCL workers.

MULTAN:

“Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz will never reveal its relationship with the buyers of Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) shares,” Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Saturday.

He was talking to newsmen at a protest by OGDCL employees in Multan.

He condemned the arrest of the OGDCL workers and demanded their immediate release.

Commenting on the reduction in petrol prices announced by the prime minister, he said it was unfortunate that Nawaz Sharif was using petroleum prices as a carrot in his carrot-and-stick plan. He said the reduction of petroleum prices were a cheap gimmick.

He said Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had distributed laptops in the same way.



He condemned the government for increasing power tariffs and mismanagement of utility bills. Qureshi said farmers, traders and manufacturers had all been hit by rising prices. He said the government’s finance policy had failed to provide relief to the common man.

He said the ruling party had failed to live up to its election promises.

“We do not want our government to make losses,” he said. “But we also cannot allow corrupt leaders to waste billions of taxpayer’s money and run the country to the ground.”

He said institutions and organisations were at the verge of collapse in the country now a days.

“Every executive officer and managing director of every top organisation is related to the senior leadership of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz or the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP),” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2014.