Past governments responsible in destabilizing country’s economic situation: Shafqat

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training, Shafqat Mahmood on Thursday said that past governments were responsible in destabilizing the economic situation of the country.

Participating in the budget discussion in the National Assembly, the minister said that opposition benches should avoid politicizing the issues and work for the progress of the country.

He said that due to incompetency of past governments, the economic condition of the country is not so good and assured that the PTI government will make effective policies for improving the economic condition of the country by taking innovative steps.

Shafqat Mehmood said that leader of the opposition in the National Assembly in his budget speech spoke on various issues but avoided to discuss budget. He said that opposition parties were weak on moral grounds as their leadership was in jail on charges of corruption.

He said that due to weak policies and poor management of PML-N and PPP governments, many state own enterprises were in worst conditions.

He said during tenure of Chief Minister Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, as many as 2,176 innocent people lost their lives in fake Punjab police encounters while the nation will not forget the Model Town incident where police fired direct bullets on people.

He said that PML-N had made physical attack on Supreme Court on the direction of their leadership and the recording is available in which Nawaz Sharif was calling and talking with Justice rtd Qayum.

He said that PML-N leadership had started horsing-trading in politics and promoted the culture of sale and purchase of politicians for making government. He said that PML-N leadership was involved in many property scandals in Lahore and they used state money on their private properties by declaring camp offices.

He said that PML-N had promoted the culture of yellow journalism in the country by preferring their favorite channels. He added they had given advertisements to their favorite channels and avoided other channels during their tenure.

He said that they used state money of Rs 5 billion as “slush fund” as they provided funds to 362 newspapers out of which many were dummies without having circulation like daily “Ghareeb”, daily “Hakomat” and daily “Herat”.

He said that interestingly, the opposition leader was talking about poor health facilities while during their tenure they couldn’t build a single hospital where they can go now for their own treatment. He however said that the present government will fulfill its responsibilities and ensure better health facilities for people.

He said that country’s literacy rate is 58% which is worst in the world due to weak education policies of past government. He added various education systems were running simultaneously due to which there was mental gap increasing day by day in students of different level of schools.

He said that production order is not an issue but why they were using the parliament as shelter for their wrongdoings.

He assured that the present government will make improvements in state affairs to change the life of common man.