The PAT White Paper is a pioneering document that charts out the government mismanagement and corruption using the most authentic sources from national and international journals, electronic & print media and data from the PAT Research Wing. It is shown how almost 1000 children a month have been abducted and kidnapped, 1000 women gang-raped a month, 500 killings and 2000 attempted murders a month, etc. in the year gone by of PMLN rule. The PMLN government is directly responsible for promoting a culture of violence in the police by targetting political opponents such as in the case of Model Town Massacre, when under the direction of Shahbaz & Nawaz Shareef, hundreds were opened fire upon and over a hundred were shot, 14 out of which died the same day. The consequence of this violent police culture is that a protest arranged by the 7000 strong blind population of Punjab, demanding the end of corruption in employment quotas for the blind have had the police attack them violently. Besides crime, the report unveils how Mr Shareef took out 850 million dollars just the past year as a loan, and squandered it, bringing the figure the Punjab owes to almost 6 billion dollars in national debt. The money has apparently been wasted in purposeless schemes or plundered in corruption. The common masses, as the report tells, havent even the means to gain basic vegetables easily, as prices have risen considerably for potatoes, tomatoes and onions as well as for staples such as rice & flour. The government instead has facilitated a select group of individual traders who have 700000 tonnes of wheat in storage to export on subisdised costs, all while the IDPs have nothing to eat. The Shareefs being sugar-mill owners themselves have not raised the prices of the sugarcane in line with price hike in processed sugar, and the farmers of sugarcane as well as other produce are protesting across the nation. These are compounded by protests from farmers that have not even received the peanuts they were offered as a consequence of the floods which also occured owing to the government mismanagement. The report also unveils that in the first 6-months only 17 percent of the government development fund for education and health was released. This clearly shows that the priority of the government is not education where 22000 subject specialist positions are vacant in the Dept. of Education. Meanwhile 7000 doctors vacancies as well as 200 million cuts in the Rescue 1122 service mean that there isnt a health policy. Also, corruption has permeated each sector with 650 out of the a700 gricultural medicine producing firms being fake. The discontent in the Rescue 1122, for not being paid salaries means they are planning nationwide protests and paired with protests from the farmers and the hungry poor, as well as other discontent segments of society means that increasingly the situation is heading towards anarchy. Indeed, the government writ is strongly being challenged by the Southern part of the Punjab which has not received its fair share of the resoruces, as promised. The bottomline appears to be that in the PMLN Government of the Punjab for the past 7 years, there is no policy for food, health, education and security as far as the people are concerned except for flashy gimmicks that offer no long-term relief. Indeed, there is just corruption and mismanagement and the bullet for whoever challenges it. I congratulate the PAT team who produced such a pioneering discourse stating the facts and figures by following in the footsteps of Dr Qadiri, in a culture where slander, cursing and ridicule is the currency of dialogue, discussion and debate. Keep it up, PAT!
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:11:30 +0000
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