ISLAMABAD: Former chief minister Punjab, Shehbaz Sharif, appeared to be looking for a toast in the National Assembly session for keeping their promises of ridding the country from load shedding.
During the lower House session on Wednesday, Shehbaz severely criticized the speech of Finance Minister Asad Umer and said it had paucity of truth, in which the Minister did mention load shedding but refrain to explain further.
“The PML-N claimed to end load shedding until 2018 elections, was it not true?” president of PML-N eagerly asked.
Addressing the government benches, the Opposition leader said “if the Finance Minister can not acknowledge our efforts, he at least should audit our projects, wherein we saved Rs160 billion.”
He boastfully added that the previous government of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) completed 20 years old pending projects. The Nelum Jhelum project was not completed in 18 years, “but we did it.” The Finance Minister should have announced to audit that project, he added.
Further commenting on the unity among opposition parties, he stated that all attempts to increase the gulf between us [PML-N] and Pakistan Peoples Party have failed.”
Federal Minister Asad Umer, during his speech remarked, “We’re being held accountable for not doing 40 years’ reforms within first 40 days.We also need to rectify those mistakes of past governments.”
He informed that the previous government spent Rs 61 billion on development projects, adding that the incumbent government will spend more amount on those projects in comparison to the last year.
He went on to say, “The economic policies of Zardari era were the worst.”
Following the footsteps of PPP, PML-N even robbed labors of their rightful money. Steel Mills is not operational for past 3 years, while PIA is also indebted, he claimed.
The minister said: “We have to fix the mistakes of the past. This year we will spend more funds on development than what was spent in previous year.”
