Shah for policy revision, forging unity to take country forward
ISLAMABAD: Leader of the Opposition in National Assembly Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah Wednesday enumerated many challenges being faced by the country, stressing the need for policy revision and forging unity among political parties to take the country forward.
He said that there was a need to adopt “us” approach and do away with “my” or “our” approach which would be beneficial for the country.
The opposition leader said that the country was facing challenges like rapid increase in population, environmental degradation, water scarcity, education and health problems, and stressed that there was need to revise policies to take the country forward and counter those challenges.
He said the biggest issue the country was facing right now was population, but nobody was trying to realize it as no plan was even suggested in the budget to tackle it.
He said the federal government should have made a strategy in coordination with the provinces to overcome the “population bomb".
He said the country was facing environmental issues as the green areas had reduced to mere 1.9 per cent compared to 24 per cent in India and 11 per cent in Bangladesh, and the government had given no heed towards the particular sector in the budget.
Shah also pointed out to the water scarcity issues, saying that Pakistan had been threatened to be among water scarce countries, but no attention was being paid towards it.
He said the country’s population had increased from 4.2 million in 1960s to over 200 million in 2018 adding that if policies were not devised population would increase manifold and there would be scarcity of resources to feed the population.
He was of the view that the government should have upheld supremacy and sovereignty of the parliament, adding that the people who ran away from the parliament disappeared from the political landscape.
He said that it was the duty of the opposition to give its point of view on the budget, which consists of two things including revenues and expenditures.
Khursheed Shah viewed that there was no issue if the government had set revenue targets, but how could it fix expenditures when it had to leave after just a month.
He said the government had fixed Rs 5.2 trillion expenditures for the whole year which was not its mandate.
He said the purpose of budget had always remained welfare of the country and the people, and to present a guideline for future.
He said compared to the growth in population, the government had failed to provide any comparative plan in education and health sectors, adding that the education budget had been squeezed to 2.2 percent of GDP now, while the health budget was just 0.9 percent of the GDP.
Khursheed Shah claimed the government had made promises in previous budgets, but did not fulfill them. It had not allocated amount for the Clean Water for All programme in the current budget, for which millions of rupees were allocated during the last budget, he added.
He said the Metro Bus and Orange Line Train projects were not included in the PML-N manifesto. “We are not against development but it should not be at the cost of health and education budget,” he said.
He said the government got loans from lending agencies during its five-year tenure and the country had to pay over Rs.1,600 billion interest on it.
He said Rs10 trillion loans were borrowed during the last five years while the circular debt of Rs 480 billion was cleared in 2013, but it had again piled up.
Regarding agriculture, he said currently no water and fertilizers were available for crops.
He said Pakistan had agro-based industry but spending on it stood at only 1.5 per cent. “India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are spending 7. 5 and 9 per cent on agriculture,” he said.