LAHORE: Endorsing the PDM's decision to launch nationwide protests against soaring inflation, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif said on Monday that nothing could be more catastrophic than an enormous hike made in petroleum products' prices.

As long as the PTI government is in power, the economy will keep getting destroyed, Shehbaz said, while briefly talking to media here on Monday. "The more, the PTI remains in power, the more the economy will suffer," he said. "The PTI government has failed to deliver."

Despite inflation, the IMF has called for imposing new taxes. Medicines have become out of reach of the people who are finding it difficult to make their both ends meet, he said. He said the government had completely failed to control the dengue virus. "We will come out on the roads against price hike," he said.

Earlier, Shehbaz Sharif in a tweet said the PTI government was eating into the vitals of bond between the state and its citizens by instilling widespread despair due to its incompetence. Shehbaz said it was a very dangerous situation and he was deeply concerned about the implications of increasingly audacious and heartless anti-people policies of that regime. He also lambasted the government led by PTI over its incompetence in managing national affairs.

"Every other day brings new evidence of PTI government's gross incompetence in managing national affairs," he added. Shehbaz said, "Cost of its obsession with self-preservation is a falling rupee, record inflation, dysfunctional economy, poor governance and institutional incoherence."

On the other hand, Opposition leader in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz told media that the PTI government was imposing new taxes on the instructions of International Monetary Fund (IMF). Hamza said the poverty-stricken people were facing difficulties in earning their livelihood due to increasing inflation. He announced to take to streets for providing relief to the people. The PTI government was on 'ventilator' as it had failed to resolve the national issues, he added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021