Workers Party Pakistan (WPP) on Wednesday urged the government to take pragmatic steps to end dominance of World Bank, IMF and WTO on national economy apart from reducing prices of gas, electricity and petrol for domestic users.
WPP, President, Abid Hasan Minto, accompanied by trade union leaders Altaf Baloch, Bashir Zafar, Aashiq Chaudhry, Irfan Chaudhry and Zahid Anjum told reporters at a press conference that the government should curtail spending on military establishment and spend the saved resources on raising the budget for education, jobs and healthcare.
Minto also urged the government to ensure the supply of irrigation water besides reducing the cost of fertilizer, seeds, diesel and electricity by half and eliminate the sales tax on agricultural inputs. He also demanded imposition of income tax on agricultural incomes of the landlords.
The working class leaders also said the recent rhetoric of 'revolution' and a 'politics of change' being spewed out by some politicians betrays the fact that none of Pakistan's mainstream parties have any interest in genuinely challenging the oligarchic system and thereby democratising Pakistani state and society.
They said that the only real anti-imperialist and anti-establishment forces can save the country from various crises that afflict it and then also make Pakistan into a people's welfare state. They said that a number of working class organisations will take out a Peasant Worker Student rally in Lahore on Saturday (March 17) to highlight the concerns and needs of the people to overturn the decadent military-dominated political system, which has run into irreconcilable contradictions.
They said the rally would bring together workers, peasants, women, katchi abadi dwellers, students and other oppressed segments of society without spending lavish amounts of money so as to demonstrate that an alternative politics must be based on principles rather than slogans. They asked the government to save the national organisations like PIA, Railways, Wapda, Steel Mills and Heavy Mechanical Complex by including the workers' representatives into the folds of management.