Federal budget is an “administrative” instead of a welfare budget : Sirajul Haq

Lahore: Ameer, Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan, Senator Sirajul Haq, has termed the next year’s federal budget as “administrative” instead of a welfare budget and said that all its  figures and estimates were fictitious and false.

Giving his comments on the next year budget to y the media outside the parliament house, Sirajul Haq said this was the budget of the rich and a drone attack for the poor.

The JI chief said there was no increase in the allocation for education, health, environment and human development. The government had failed to hold census a therefore, all estimates of income and expenditure were based on false presumptions. The federal government had been unable to grant funds to the provinces according to the N, F.C. and the distribution of the resources among the provinces was not just and in line with the constitution.

The JI chief said that the common man was already paying withholding tax in almost 90 forms due to which he had to face price hike and was unable to pay the electricity bills.

Sirajul Haq said the ten per cent raise in the salaries and pensions of government servants was totally a inadequate and not commensurate with the price hike.  He said the minimum wages for workers had been raised to Rs. 14000 which too was not implemented. He wondered if the Finance Minister could prepare the budget of a family with this amount.

The JI chief said that even during the current year, the government had failed to achieve its target in agriculture. He said that around 64 per cent of the population was dependent on agriculture but the assurances to the agriculturists in the new year budget were also false.

He said only a small cut in the prices of fertilizer had been announced but the budget was silent on agricultural pesticides, seed and other farm inputs.

The JI chief said that the interest based economy could never flourish or provide relief to the people and national economy could not progress on loans.

He said the budget or the tribal areas was also too small.