The opposition has rejected unprecedented hike in the price of petroleum products but masses have been keeping mum.
The federal government had on Saturday raised the price of petrol by Rs10.49 per litre and high speed diesel (HSD) by Rs12.44 per litre.
Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz lashed out at the increase, calling it a “calamity” that had befallen the people like a “lightning bolt”.
“When petrol and diesel become expensive then your electricity, wheat, bread, vegetables and everything become expensive,” she explained.
She asked what fault it was of the nation that every day some new crisis was thrust upon the people.
“Not everyone has ATMs or friends who run your kitchen, house and expenses,” she said in a veiled dig at Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The PML-N vice president said that MNAs and MPAs of her party had been instructed to go to their constituencies and “share the people’s grief and pain”.
SHEHBAZ SHARIF: Nawaz League President Shehbaz Sharif blasted the latest hike in petrol prices, calling it “utterly shameful” and saying it would “push people to the brink of starvation”.
“No words to describe the extreme cruelty this selected PTI regime has inflicted on the people in the form of yet another increase in the prices of items of daily use,” he tweeted.
“These latest hikes along with petrol bomb will push people to the brink of starvation. Utterly shameful!”
PPP ANNOUNCES PROTEST: The People’s Party (PPP) not only assailed the hike but also announced a protest against the ongoing wave of inflation in the country.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, PPP Senator Saleem Mandviwala said consultation had begun with other opposition parties for the protest, which would kick off from the capital.
He, along with other PPP leaders, said the people were left at the mercy of the International Monetary Fund and a “tsunami of inflation” was heading their way due to the price hike.
BILAWAL: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, in a tweet, reiterated his party’s stance on the subject.
“The PTI has brought a tsunami of inflation in the country by bringing [prices of] petroleum products to the highest level in the history of the country,” he said.
Bilawal said the government was actually “collecting the cost of its incompetence” from the people by raising the petrol price by more than Rs10 per litre. He also compared the current government’s response to the increase in international prices of petroleum products with that of what, he said, the PPP had done back when they were in power.
“Only a people-friendly government of the PPP can save the country from the tsunami of inflation,” he said. “The rise in petrol and diesel prices the day after the hike in electricity prices proves that Imran Khan is an anti-people prime minister,” the PPP chairman said.
MUSTAFA KAMAL: Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) Chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal criticised the federal government for raising the price of petroleum products, which he said was akin to forcing the common man up against the wall.
“This has been repeated so many times that it now sounds strange even to say that the government does not [care for the common man],” he said while delivering a media talk in Karachi. “Forget giving them 10m jobs, the ones who already had jobs are now unemployed as well.
“This hike in prices of petroleum products [would make] the life of a common man from bad to worse. You don’t give gas in the winters and electricity in the summers so the common man has been forced against the wall.”
Petrol and HSD are two major products that generate most of the revenue for the government because of their massive and yet growing consumption in the country. Average petrol sales are touching 750,000 tonnes per month against the monthly consumption of around 800,000 tonnes of HSD. The sales of kerosene and LDO are generally less than 11,000 and 2,000 tonnes per month, respectively.
Under the revised mechanism, oil prices are revised by the government on a fortnightly basis to pass on international prices published in Platt’s Oilgram instead of the previous mechanism of monthly calculations on the basis of import cost of the Pakistan State Oil.
