ISLAMABAD, SEPT 24 /DNA/ – The Central Information Secretary of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Nadeem Afzal Chan, and the In-charge of the Peoples Labour Bureau, Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, addressed a press conference at the Party’s Central Secretariat in Islamabad. Former Member of the National Assembly, Ghulam Murtaza Satti, was also present.
Nadeem Afzal Chan said that the Punjab government is avoiding its responsibility to provide relief to poor farmers affected by the recent floods. He emphasized that the Benazir Bhutto Income Support Programme (BISP) is the only welfare programme in Pakistan that has been internationally recognized and praised. Initiated for the underprivileged, BISP was the dream of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and was practically launched by President Asif Ali Zardari. Today, it benefits nearly ten million poor families.
He strongly criticized Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) for recently branding BISP a fraud, reminding that this was the same Jamaat-e-Islami which had recruited innocent citizens in the name of the Afghan Jihad and collected billions of rupees in that failed project. “Was Jamaat-e-Islami’s Jihad project a success or a failure?” Chan asked, adding that JI sacrificed innocent lives in a futile war.
Chan further said that BISP’s reliable data could be used to provide relief to flood victims. “Will international institutions depend on patwari records for aid distribution?” he asked. “Our demand is not about whose picture is displayed on the aid packages. Anyone is free to put their picture, from the ballot box to the grave.”
Highlighting PPP’s track record, he noted that Pakistan achieved a wheat surplus only during PPP’s tenure. He said President Asif Ali Zardari had suggested setting the support price at Rs. 4,000, but the present government is instead benefitting foreign farmers while undermining local ones. He revealed that wheat worth Rs. 2 trillion had already been imported, with another Rs. 5 trillion to follow, yet no relief was being extended to domestic farmers.
Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, speaking next, said that questions remain as to whether water was deliberately used as a weapon. “If India carried out water aggression, how is it that East Punjab also faced devastation? Embankments were broken in many places, some to prevent greater damage, but others due to sheer negligence of the Punjab administration,” he said.
He emphasized that only BISP has the infrastructure reaching down to the Union Council level to deliver aid efficiently. “We are not demanding that Benazir’s picture be displayed on relief packages. But apart from BISP, there is no other mechanism with such reach,” he added.
Manzoor also accused Jamaat-e-Islami of exploiting the poor by pushing them into Zia-ul-Haq’s Jihad project. “That project was fraudulent, a failure, and history has proven it. JI even won seats in elections under the cover of that scheme. They must confine themselves to politics instead of exploiting people’s lives,” he said.
The PLB In-charge said that PPP does not wish to politicize the floods but wants to present facts and figures. He criticized the government for hiding behind IMF conditions instead of buying wheat from local farmers. By importing 3.5 million tons of wheat, the government has economically destroyed Pakistani farmers. He added that only 800,000 tons of wheat remain in reserve today, against the required 2.8 million tons. “Why is the government not allowing wheat to move to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa? Why impose a ban on inter-provincial transport of wheat, making bread more expensive in smaller provinces?” he asked.
Addressing the scale of destruction, Manzoor said: “The greatest losses from the floods have been in East and West Punjab. The real question is: did we drown naturally, or were we drowned?” He added that crops and the economy had suffered the most. Referring to Maryam Nawaz’s announcement of Rs. 20,000 for per flood victim, he questioned. “On what basis was this figure calculated? Twenty thousand Indian rupees equals sixty-five thousand Pakistani rupees. In Indian Punjab, fertilizers and pesticides are cheaper, and farmers are exempt from electricity bills, while here bills are only waived in areas where there is no power at all.”
Listing the devastation, he said maize, turmeric, cotton, and sugarcane crops had been destroyed, with each acre suffering at least Rs. 100,000 in losses and orchard Rs. 500,000/- per acre. He urged the government to provide alternative state-owned agricultural land to farmers whose lands had been rendered unusable by the floods. “The Punjab government is mocking our demands as well as the farmers’ plight. The BISP, with its geo-tagged database, is the only credible mechanism for relief distribution and it has been used effectively in the past,” he concluded.
