RAWALPINDI, Jul 3 (APP): Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday expressed the resolve to make those people answerable who had plundered the national exchequer and burdened the nation with financial woes.
He reiterated that there would be no concession for the looters and plunderers. “There will be no NRO whatever approach they make to save their skin. I will make them answerable,” he said.
The prime minister was addressing an inauguration ceremony of Sir Syed Express train at Rawalpindi Railway station.
He said if today, both Zardari and Nawaz Sharif brought back the looted money, the rupee would be strengthened, easing the pressure of dollar.
The Prime Minister Imran Khan said during last decade, the two successive governments of PPP and PML-N had burdened the country with Rs30, 000 billion debt which was around Rs6000 billion ten years back.
Two houses of Sharif and Zardari had become billionaires while the nation suffered, he added.
The prime minister strongly rebuffed the opposition’s claims of revengeful policy towards them, by adding that when he had taken up the Panama case in the Supreme Court, he was made a victim of vindictive policy by the previous rulers who had registered 32 FIRs against him and filed six cases in the Election Commission of Pakistan. “That can be called as vengeful approach by the PML-N government against him,” he added.
He said that he had answered all the questions at the Supreme Court who had declared him as ‘sadiq’ and ‘amin’. “I have not escaped to London but replied to every question,” he added.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said an unprecedented and across-the-board action had been taken against the looters of national exchequer.
“Bandits belonging to elite class have been taken to task and put behind bars, never done before previously,” he said, adding that the dream of ‘New Pakistan’ had started seeing the day of light.
The Prime Minister said he would not bow before any external or internal pressure to let the ‘elite national offenders’ leave the country.
“Talk to which ever monarch or ruler [of any other country], I will not let you leave without extracting from you the looted money,” he said.
The prime minister said in democracy, leaders were answerable to every deed they had committed and they did not flee from the country in the face of accountability.
“It is the Naya Pakistan. There will be one Pakistan for all and the same law for all and sundry.”
He said those who had gobbled billion of rupees or laundered the national wealth abroad had been demanding the ‘VIP’ treatment in jails.
He said that law minister had been directed to look into this matter as the jails should be meant for punishment practiced worldwide.
In the country, he regretted, the jails were only meant for the poor. The prime minister said that he had promised with the nation that he would made all the plunderers and money launderers answerable.
Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and other high official also attended the ceremony.
Appreciating minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, the prime minister said that with his efforts, he had brought down losses of railways from Rs 36 billion losses to 32 billion in ten months.
The prime minister lamented that PIA, power, gas sectors and railways were running into huge losses due to the major reason of corruption.
“A country does not become poor due to lack of resources but due to cancer of corruption. It is the corruption which make the elite class richer at the cost of poor people,” he added.
He said contrary to the spectacle, in India the railways had been earning billion of rupees in profit.
The prime minister also referred to the Rs200 billion ‘Ahsas Programme’ aimed at lifting the conditions of the poor segments of the society.
He said that it was happening for the first time in the country that its resources were being spent on the feeble and poor strata of the society.
The prime minister observed that establishment of about 1000 kiosks by railways could also benefit the poor people, downtrodden, widows and unemployed.
He said in Naya Pakistan all citizens would be treated equally with focus on facilitating the weaker classes and regretted that in the past, education was only meant for the elite class.
Source: VNS Islamabad
