Foreign reserves being increased by mortgaging future of nation: Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri

PAT Chairman Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri has said that foreign exchange reserves are being increased by mortgaging the future of 190 million people. He said that industry and agriculture are in the reverse gear; the youth are committing suicide; the poor remain deprived of basic necessities of life and there is a talk of increase in foreign exchange reserves. He said that it is incomprehensible to determine as to what caused an increase in the size of these reserves.

Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri expressed these views while addressing the Central Executive Council of PAT yesterday via telephone from Toronto. He said that the coming generations are being bogged down in the debt trap by massive and merciless borrowing and through sale of state owned enterprises at throwaway prices. He said that sale of Eurobond is the sale of national interest. He asked as to why the Parliament and the institutions responsible for carrying out accountability are silent on the economic crimes of the government. He said that per capita debt has crossed the threshold of Rs. one hundred thousand, which was less than 70,000 rupees two years ago.

The PAT Chairman said that the rulers are getting loans after loans for their luxuries and squandering away precious national resources on transport projects of various colours. He said that these multi billionaire rulers will flee the country while the coming generations will undergo the pain of returning the debt for many decades to come. He said that presence of the current rulers and corrupt system is not in Pakistan’s supreme national interest. He warned that if any delay was allowed in conducting a ‘bypass operation’ to uproot the scourge of corruption, it will become next to impossible to bring the big fish under the purview of law. He said that inability or failure to net economic wrongdoers will impact the ongoing Operation Zarb-e-Azb.

Dr Qadri said hardly had some of the front men been booked for their role in corruption that the political elite, which is addicted to corruption, rolled up its sleeves and started blackmailing the national institutions. He said that we ask the national institutions to carry out operation against corruption in the same way they did against terrorism and thus purge the country out of corrupt elements. He said that even today schemes and plans are being hatched in the Finance Ministry to whiten the black money and give protection to the practice of money laundering. He said that it is high time that campaign against corruption was paced up.

The PAT chief said that had the institutions responsible for carrying out accountability did their part of the job, other institutions would not have needed to do anything. He said that the current anticorruption laws and prevalent legal system are giving protection to corruption and plunder in the form of plea bargain. He said that these laws are the major hurdle in the way of accountability. He said that time has come to cross these barriers to take the country forward. He said that we are having a keen eye on the national landscape and are ready to play our role proactively as the ripe time comes.