The man in the street is not interested in what is going on at the government level but is worried how to make ends meet. The ever increasing trend of price hike of daily items is making life miserable.
The difficulty in managing personal finances with ever increasing prices of food and utility bills, the common man is finding himself bogged down. Added to that a free and investigative media, the common man comes to know about the various large scale scams in the country in which high profile people and government functionaries are minting billions of rupees, by looting and plundering the national exchequer with impunity. These are the people who are parasites on our national economy and perhaps are above the law.
In the recent past, we have learnt that the sons and relatives of bigwigs, who have swindled billions of rupees, have been declared innocent, due to lack of evidence, just like the criminals of TTP and are enjoying a happy and rich life. The public is still waiting for the outcome of scandals like PIA, Steel Mill, Pakistan Railways, NICL, Hajj scandal, Euphederine quota, non-utilization of development funds by the MPA and MNAs and dozens of other areas which the public have perhaps forgotten but our ever vigilant electronic media has kept these issues alive.
There is yet another category of scam. This is awarding big contracts to local or international parties where special people who are well connected with the rulers get the contracts or commission, such contracts hardly come to light but the blue eyed are making millions and billions of rupees and remain undetected. A recent case was exposed by a TV channel and the corruption was very alarming. This was about refurbishing of over 100 ambulances of Rescue 1122. A huge sum of Rs 2.4 millions on each ambulance was spent to refurbish it. The anchor person had called the DG of Rescue 1122 and asked him to give an estimate of all items fitted in the ambulance. The liberal estimate of all items provided in the ambulance did not exceed 0.5 million as personally given by DG.
It appears DG was helpless in the award of this contract. Now the question is who is responsible for this contract and who pocketed Rs 1.9 million per ambulance which comes to over 190 million? It is one example where the award of a contract by the government has been revealed, how about hundreds of other contracts where air-crafts, sub-marines, metro buses, lap tops, coal gasification turbines, dam water turbine, other big plants etc are imported on international tenders? The new NAB chairman is urged and requested to take on all such looters of the national wealth and recover the looted money which is in fact the main and difficult task of NAB. The money looted in various scams in the country has never been recovered and the cases have been brushed under the carpet.
MUHAMMAD AZHAR KHWAJA,
Lahore, September 20.