Sherry slams PM's decision of giving parting gift to government employees

Senate Opposition Leader, Senator Sherry Rehman criticized the Prime Minister's decision to 'gift' three-months pay to federal government employees. "By all standards this is an extraordinary and hugely questionable intervention on the eve of the end of term by an outgoing government. No law allows the federal government to announce a three months bonus salary," said Rehman.
"It is a clear violation of election rules, which is why people are calling it pre-poll rigging The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) must immediately take notice and investigate this shocking move," asserted the Senator, according to a press release issued here on Saturday.
The vice-president of PPPP added, "The fact that it was done two weeks after a budget was passed and less than a hundred days before an election speaks to the shockingly open attempt to stack the decks in favor of the ruling party through the interim period. For such a major decision, how can the government introduce an unprecedented honorarium without any parliamentary oversight especially when it is at public expense?" Rehman went further to say,"Our country is drowning in a pile of debt and majority of our people are barely making ends meet. Yet, instead of providing relief to the people, the government decided to pull a move that is a slap in the face of the seven million over-burdened taxpayers who are already struggling to shoulder the free flowing and self serving expenditures of this government."
"Instead of making this ill-advised move, the government could have invested in our deteriorating healthcare system. Pakistan is only spending 0.5 to 0.8% of its GDP on health for the last 10 years. If not health care, this 30 billion could have been allocated to pay teachers, build classrooms or grant scholarships. 40% public sector primary schools operate without electricity and around 25% of schools do not even have boundary walls. This money could have built thousands of classrooms and sent millions of children to school, considering the fact that 25 million children are out of school in Pakistan," Rehman elaborated.
"It is infuriating and disappointing to see that even in their final days in government, the PML-N still has its own agenda placed above the interest of the people they were meant to serve. Instead of providing relief, they have consistently adopted policies that would add burden to the poorest of the poor," concluded the Senate opposition leader.-PR