Karachi   -  The Pakistan People’s Party staged protest demonstrations on Friday in every district of Karachi to agitate against persisting natural gas shortfall, joblessness, skyrocketing inflation, worsening of economic situation in the country caused due to incompetence on the part of the PTI’s federal government.

The demonstrations were held after Friday prayers as the participants raised slogans against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s government and also held banners and placards to register their protest against bad governance and ill-advised policies of the rulers. PPP Chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, gave directives to hold protest demonstrations all over the country.

Speaking to the demonstrators at Lasbela Chowk in District East of Karachi, Sindh Information and Labour Minister, Saeed Ghani, said it was only Pakistan People’s Party that had taken people to streets against the persisting gas crisis in the country as no other political party had been staging the protest against the issue. He said the present rulers before coming into power had promised to build five million houses as not a single home had yet been built whereas several residential units in the country had been demolished. He said the PTI’s rule in the country had caused several crises in the country. He said the prices of the essential products had become utterly unaffordable for the poor people in the country.

Saeed Ghani, who is also PPP Karachi President, said that household consumers didn’t have natural gas supply for cooking food to feed their families. He told the demonstrators that people had been compelled to use woods for cooking food due to persisting natural gas crisis. He said that reports had been doing rounds in Islamabad that the federal government could default on the payment of salaries to its employees in three months’ time if the worsening of the economy continued unabated. He said the present rulers had proved that they were the biggest thieves in the country as the rates of dollar, fuel, and essential products had increased manifold during the current regime.

Without naming the MQM, Saeed Ghani said that the political party, which considered itself as the owner of Karachi had been keeping silence against the unjust policies of the present government as in the past they had threatened to leave the coalition government even if the petrol price was raised by 25 Paisa.

He said the same political party had been again attempting to cause ethnic conflict in Karachi so to divert attention of the people away from the genuine public issues in the country. He said the same party knew that it had to face utter defeat in the forthcoming local government elections in Karachi, as their electoral performance would be worse than that in the recent Baldia Town by-poll in Karachi. He said that MQM should keep in mind that it didn’t have any more the power to keep Karachi shut down.