Checks and balances: Govt has failed to deliver in all sectors, says Yasmin Rashid

LAHORE:

Chaudhry was speaking to journalists at the party’s office in the city.  He said the Sharif brothers liked to boast about transparency but the PILDAT report had contradicted this. Chaudhry said the politically conscious people of Pakistan would not allow the elite to plunder the nation’s wealth by remaining silent spectators. He said transparency in development projects was imperative to put an end to corruption. “Instead, contracts are awarded to Chinese and Turkish firms through Saifur Rehman during the reign of the Sharif brothers,” he said.


Secretary general Yasmin Rashid said the report reflected the sentiments of the people. Rashid said the government had miserably failed to deliver in any sector. She said the national economy was on a downward spiral and an increase in electricity load shedding had debilitated industry. Rashid said the government had not revealed the details of the agreements concluded with other countries nor bothered to take the parliament into confidence on this account. She said having knowledge of where resources were being spent was a fundamental right of taxpayers.

Information secretary Andleeb Abbas said transparency in government had become a joke in the nation. She said the suspect deals concluded by the government amounted to a crime against the nation. Abbas said the Sharif brothers had compromised the nation’s reputation and were least interested in transparent conduct of affairs of the state. She said transparency had been taken to a higher level in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa following the introduction of the Right to Information Act.

The report, which was released on May 6, assessed the federal government’s quality of governance on 25 accounts. According to the report, the government’s performance in disaster management, foreign policy management, anti-corruption efforts, peace, stability, public order and defence sectors had improved over the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s first year in office. On the other hand, the report said the government’s performance had not improved in the education, immunisation of children, unemployment management and regulatory sectors over the same timeframe. The government’s performance showed a downward trend in the healthcare, environmental stability, transparency, poverty alleviation and population growth management sectors over the PML-N’s first year in office, according to the report.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2015.