Govt Has Left People’s Kitchens Cold, Women Unsafe: JI Emir

Govt Has Left People’s Kitchens Cold, Women Unsafe: JI Emir

LAHORE, Aug 22: Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Emir Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman has said the Punjab government has failed to protect women and provide basic services, adding inflation has left households struggling to put food on the table while women and children face growing insecurity and deprivation.
Addressing a large women’s gathering at the JI sit-in outside the Punjab Chief Minister’s House on The Mall on Saturday, Rehman said the protest would continue until the government withdrew the petroleum levy. He warned that the party would expand its campaign into a nationwide strike, shutter-down and long march if the government refused to accept its demands.
The JI emir said sit-ins were continuing simultaneously at three locations across the country, describing the campaign as a broader struggle against inflation, independent power producers (IPPs), high fuel prices and the petroleum levy.
“The issue is not merely petrol prices; it is about every household’s kitchen,” he said, adding that any increase in fuel prices triggered a chain reaction across the economy and pushed up the cost of living.
The JI Emir said women were participating in large numbers because inflation had placed an unbearable burden on families. Mothers, he said, were cutting back on their own needs to pay their children’s school fees while many households had been forced to struggle for basic food.
He said that Punjab had failed to provide women with adequate protection despite having a woman as chief minister. More than 4,500 rape cases involving women were reported in the province last year, he said, but only four out of every 1,000 accused were convicted.
He said the police and judicial systems was failing to provide ordinary citizens with justice and added the government had also failed to ensure safe public transport and security for women.
The JI leader said that around eight million girls were out of school in Punjab and that the province’s literacy rate was no higher than 70 per cent. He said girls constituted around 60 per cent of children out of school, compared with 40 per cent boys.
“The government has deprived our daughters of their basic right to education,” he said, adding that the Punjab government had outsourced 11,000 girls’ schools.
He said the Constitution guaranteed free and quality education to citizens but around 80 per cent of families could not afford university fees. Poor children, he added, had the same right to education as the children of the ruling elite.
Turning to the healthcare sector, Rehman said women graduating as doctors were not receiving their due share of house jobs and that qualified doctors were struggling to find decent employment. Doctors who spoke up for their rights, he said, risked losing their jobs.
He also criticised the government’s handling of basic healthcare facilities, saying renaming or rebranding basic health centres did not resolve the problems faced by ordinary citizens. Rehman said Pakistan had around 85 million workers, including nearly 30 million women, many of whom worked in factories and agricultural fields. Yet, he said, minimum wages had not been properly determined for millions of women in Punjab.
He said Lady Health Workers were protesting over their rights while skilled people continued to face a lack of opportunities.
The JI emir linked the country’s economic hardship to rising poverty, saying that more than 40 per cent of Pakistanis were living below the poverty line. Poverty, he said, had increased by 33 per cent nationally over the past six years and by 41 per cent in Punjab.
He said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz and those who brought them to power were making people poorer.
“Today, our sisters and daughters are being forced to work because their families can no longer make ends meet,” he said.
On the petroleum levy, Rehman that the government was collecting more than Rs125 per litre from consumers through taxes and levies on petrol.
“The government says it cannot abolish the levy. We say we cannot end the sit-in,” he said, demanding an immediate withdrawal of the levy and measures to bring down inflation.
He also criticised the government for imposing taxes on electricity, flour, mobile phone services, sugar and other essential goods, saying the state controlled the country’s resources but ordinary citizens remained deprived of basic facilities.
Rehman said Pakistan’s political and administrative system continued to serve a privileged class and described the bureaucracy inherited from British rule as treating citizens like subjects.
“Changing the system’s branches will not be enough; it has to be uprooted from its roots,” he said.
Addressing Maryam Nawaz directly, he said the Punjab government would have to confront people’s problems rather than rely on “showpiece measures”. He also criticised the purchase of an aircraft costing Rs11 billion, contrasting what he described as lavish spending by rulers with the sacrifices made by ordinary mothers to educate their children.
He said the JI was also working to provide opportunities to young people, noting that more than 1.7 million students had registered with the party’s Bano Qabil programme.
He said the government possessed the resources required to provide healthcare, education and other basic services and could no longer continue exploiting the public.
He reiterated that the sit-ins would continue until the petroleum levy was abolished and inflation brought under control, warning that the JI would move towards a nationwide strike, shutter-down campaign and long march if the government failed to respond.
Acting Secretary General of JI’s Women’s Wing Samina Saeed, Deputy Secretary Sameeha Raziq Qazi, Central Punjab Women’s Wing chief Nazia Tauheed, North Punjab chief Samina Ehsan and Lahore chief Uzma Imran also addressed the gathering.