ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday expressed the resolve to hold people, who plundered the national exchequer and burdened the nation, with financial woes accountable.
Speaking during an inauguration ceremony of Sir Syed Express at Rawalpindi Railway Station, the prime minister said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government would not let “looters and plunderers” go scot-free.
“There will be no NRO [National Reconciliation Ordinance] whatever approach they take to save their skin. I will make them answerable,” he vowed.
The two houses, Sharifs and Zardaris, looted billions while the nation suffered, he added.
The prime minister Imran Khan said that during the last decade, the governments of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had burdened the country with Rs30,000 billion debt– an addition of Rs24000bn in 10 years.
He said if today, both former president Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif brought back the looted money the rupee would be strengthened against the US dollar. T
The prime minister strongly rebuffed the opposition’s claims of revengeful policy towards them.
He said when he had taken up the Panama case in the Supreme Court, he was made a victim of “vindictive policy by the previous rulers who had registered 32 FIRs against him and filed six cases in the Election Commission of Pakistan”.
“That can be called a vengeful approach by the PML-N government,” he added.
He said that he had answered all the questions at the Supreme Court which had declared him as ‘sadiq’ and ‘amin’. “I have not escaped to London but replied to every question,” he added.
Minister for Railways Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed and other high officials also attended the ceremony.
Appreciating minister for Railways Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, the prime minister said that with his efforts, he had brought down losses of railways from Rs 36 billion losses to 32 billion in ten months.
The prime minister lamented that PIA, power, gas sectors and railways were running into huge losses due to the major reason due to the corruption.
“A country does not become poor due to lack of resources, but due to cancer of corruption. It is the corruption which makes the elite class richer at the cost of poor people,” he added.
He said contrary to the spectacle, in India the railways had been earning billions of rupees in profit.
The prime minister also referred to the Rs200bn ‘Ehsas Programme’ which is aimed at lifting the conditions of the poor segments of the society.
He said that it was happening for the first time in the country that its resources are being spent on the feeble and poor strata of the society.
The prime minister observed that establishment of about 1000 kiosks by the railways could also benefit the poor people, downtrodden, widows and unemployed.
He said in Naya Pakistan all citizens would be treated equally with focus on facilitating the weaker classes and regretted that in the past, education was only meant for the elite class.
