The people of Pakistan have suffered at the hands of PPP and PML-N because of their bad governance, defective economic planning, corruption and failure to maintain the law and order situation, Vice-Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Sunday.
The people of Pakistan, he said, should vote PTI into power to save the country.
Shah Mahmood Qureshi was addressing a press conference at PTI's media office here. Giving statistical data proving that the country as a whole and Punjab in particular had incurred huge losses because of "useless projects such as Sasti Roti, Danish Schools and Rapid Bus Transport System".
"The country is infested by inflation, unemployment, corruption and poverty and as a result 50 percent of the population have gone below the poverty line," he added.
Qureshi maintained that the Baloch people did not trust government agencies such as police and FC. "This will have an adverse impact on the federation and it will be weakened."
On issue of new provinces, he said that the people of southern Punjab did not trust either of the parties.
"PPP is playing this card (creation of new provinces) to hide its poor performance and (trying to) divert (people's) attention from real issues. An example of this is the parliamentary commission (which) is a joke. People in the commission are incompetent and do not know anything about the dynamics, demographics and ground realities of southern Punjab."
Criticising the commission, he said that it had avoided taking up the issue of Hazara province, adding that the panel comprised of "inexperienced individuals which shows the (government's) lack of will and seriousness".
As far as the PML-n was concerned, it supported the idea of new provinces but was unwilling to sit and talk. "The PML-N...has disappointed the masses by its poor governance. Punjab has a bigger fiscal space but the provincial government did not perform, as they keep borrowing from the State Bank."
Highlighting World Bank's support for promotion of education, he said that Rs6 billion had been "wasted on the Punjab government's laptop scheme" which could have been spent on rural areas of the province. He also said that Rs80 million had been wasted on advertisements and personal projection campaigns.
Over the past four and a half years, resource mobilisation in Punjab had failed, leading to a budget deficit.
According to him, India gave five percent of GDP of its total national revenue to its states, but in Pakistan, Punjab gave only 0.5 percent in 2010-2011, development funds amounting to Rs65.5 billion had been cut down by the Punjab government which had been never done before in the country's history. Article 53, even before the 18th Amendment, gave provinces the right to generate own power, but Punjab failed to mitigate."
Giving a brief analysis of the Law and order situation in the province, Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that there was an overall 21 percent increase in crime rate in Punjab, 94.4 percent increase in car lifting, 100 percent increase in bank robberies, 102 percent increase in robberies, 22 percent increase in rape cases, 13 percent increase in kidnappings and 15 percent increase in murders.
Citing data from Punjab's annual education status report for 2011, he said that 49 percent of children between three to five years of age did not go to school and the province's literacy rate had increased by just one percent.
Overall enrollment decreased, he said. As many as 5,700 schools had been closed down on the plea of their being dysfunctional, he said.
In Danish schools, Rs16,000 per child was spent whereas in a government school, the expense was just Rs1,600 per child, he said. "This results in creating a divide amongst the people. The amount spent on Danish schools could have been utilised for upgrading 660 primary schools to middle level."
Citing various health sector scandals, he said that the dengue outbreak, the incident of adulterated medicines in PIC and mishandling of the YDA issue spoke volumes of the provincial government's failure on the governance front.
Both the PPP and PML-N had miserably failed because of inefficiency, corruption and poor governance.
He declared that PTI would announce its health and education policies in September.
"Time has come to reject parties of the status quo. People should vote for PTI, as this party will come to power through the support of people, instead of Washington's support."