PESHAWAR: Fawad Hussain, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, stated on Wednesday that PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif and vice president Maryam Nawaz staged the no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan for escaping the country.
“The objective of Shehbaz and Maryam’s no-trust action is nothing more than to have a chance to leave abroad,” the information minister added. “But we will not let them succeed in such attempts unless they refund the looted public money.”
Fawad made these statements at the Peshawar Press Club during a memorial service for senior journalist Rahimullah Yousafzai and Daily Frontier Star Editor-in-Chief Professor Dr Hafiz Sanaullah.
Ironically, he claimed, the opposition parties were made up of “political dwarfs” who failed to conduct research on key socioeconomic issues and thus became a source of “false news.”
The information minister claimed that the PPP and the PML-N, while in power for ten years, took loans totaling Rs23 trillion throughout their respective terms. He went on to say that the country had been afflicted by a “decade of darkness.”
“From 1947 to 2006, around Rs6 trillion in loans were taken and spent on the construction of Islamabad, the purchase of Gwadar, the equipping of the armed forces, and the development of road infrastructure.”
He said that the current government will have to borrow money in the next two years to repay $18 billion in debts obtained by previous regimes.
Fawad thanked the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for putting their faith in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s leadership, saying the political journey of “transformation” began in the province in 2013 and helped to abolish the country’s two-party system.
He went on to say that the PTI’s re-election to a two-thirds majority in the 2018 general elections was unprecedented.
According to Fawad, the administration is working to transform Pakistan into a truly Islamic social welfare state modelled like Riyast-e-Madina for the socio-economic emancipation of the poor and marginalised.
He further said that it was Prime Minister Imran Khan who had made significant attempts to steer the country in the correct way.
“In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Kashmir, the revolutionary Sehat Sahulat Card programme has been established to provide every person with free treatment worth up to one million rupees in the country’s finest hospitals.”
To combat inflation and price rises, he claimed, the Prime Minister’s Ration Subsidy Program was introduced, under which the poor received a 30 percent subsidy on necessary foodstuffs.
“Such projects have created a solid foundation for the country’s development into a truly Islamic social welfare state.”
