ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Secretary Information Marriyum Aurangzeb has said the latest report by Transparency International was a slap on PTI’s claims of eliminating corruption within 90 days.

Addressing a press conference in Chak Shehzad here Friday, she said Imran Khan and his PTI had not started a single project for the past eight years in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and for the past three and half years in Punjab or other provinces.

“According to the auditor general of Pakistan, out of the Rs 1.24 trillion Covid Relief Fund announced by the Prime Minister only Rs 354.2 billion was released by June 2020 in which Rs 40 billion were stolen by this corrupt government. The PTI government refused to give the record to the Auditor General to hide its theft. But the record that was finally made available to the auditor general showed that this government had robbed Rs 40 billion from these Rs 354.2 billion. This report was hidden from the people of Pakistan for over 6 months by the PTI government but it had to finally release it after their lords at the IMF made a condition of making public,” she said.

Read more: Pakistan declared ‘More corrupt’ than before

The government rejected the report by the Auditor General which was equivalent to the thief telling the police and the judge that he/she does not recognize the conviction, she said.

“The PTI government has no right to stop or hinder this inquiry because their own government departments are guilty of massive corruption”, the PML-N leader said.

Marriyum said this Rs 40 billion corruption was only till June 2020 and the remaining RS 900 billion were still unaccounted for. It was yet to be seen where that money went and would it be recovered from the basements of Bani Gala, she said.

The biggest corruption of this PTI government highlighted by the Auditor General’s report was in the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP). She said the auditor general found out that all of the withdrawals from the BISP fund were made through fictitious thumbprints which made them all controversial.

A total of RS 133.3 billion were utilized from the BISP fund and were supposed to be disbursed to 1.3 million enrolled people. Not a single one of the 1.3 million people got a single penny. How can this government even dream of holding elections through EVMs when it could not successfully conduct biometrics for 1.3 million BISP recipients, she questioned. Meanwhile, through fake biometrics with no record Rs 25 billion were stolen by the PTI government, she said.

The PML-N Secretary Information also pointed out the massive corruption in the operations of PTI government’s Utility Stores, where substandard commodities were procured to rob Rs 5 billion in corruption out of the total Rs 10 billion allocated. According to the Auditor General Rs 6 billion were robbed from the Rs 22.8 billion set for the National Disaster Management Authority. RS 145 billion were to be distributed among deserving people out of which only Rs 145 billion were distributed while the remaining Rs 5 billion was still missing.

Under the Covid relief fund, the government had announced Rs 100 billion for relief in electricity and gas tariffs out of which only Rs 15 billion have been given while it was unknown which ATMS and Mafias were awarded the remaining amount. Because Imran wanted to reward his ATMs and Mafias expensive electricity through furnace oil was being produced which led to the fuel adjustment charges and now the cost of electricity was Rs 29 per unit which was Rs 11 per unit when PML-N left, she reminded.

Similarly gas cost shot up from Rs 600 per MMBTU to Rs 1400 per MMBTU.

Marriyum said all this corruption was a product of PTI’s complicity and incompetence and incapacity to monitor these funds because all of this government’s energies and resource were focused on monitoring Nawaz Sharif, Shehbaz Sharif, Hamza Shehbaz, Maryam Nawaz, Shahid Khaqan, Ahsan IQbal, Saad Rafiq, Rana Sanaullah and other PML-N leaders so that their freedom can be choked and they could be persecuted in every way possible.

The people of Pakistan believe that due to the corruption and incompetence of PTI there was no policy, strategy, planning or measures taken by the Imran government that could have stopped this upsurge in corruption and decline of the quality of life across Pakistan.

The former Information Minister said not only did this PTI government deprived the nation of basic necessities like sugar, flour, medicine, electricity, gas and petrol, but they didn’t even spare the Covid-19 Relief Fund. She said the government made the so-called ‘Grievance Cells’ to hide its theft.

She said that Imran must thank Nawaz Sharif for starting and funding so many projects that Imran was able to inaugurate and put his name on the plaques shamelessly. She said Imran’s bigotry was on display as he exposed his prejudice against Nawaz Sharif while speaking after inaugurating Nawaz’s project. But she said, the people of Pakistan were not fooled by any of this petty optics.
“In fact majority of public projects currently benefiting the nation were a product of the dedication and hardwork of Nawaz Sharif,” she claimed.

Talking about the recently released report of Transparency International indicating the rising corruption in the country, she said that this was a slap on the face of those who pledged to eliminate powerful corrupt individuals in 90 days and hold everyone accountable. She said the corruption perception index was at 117 when the PML-N left the power in 2018 because the PML-N brought it down from 127 in 2013. However, during the tenure of the so-called champions of anti-corruption and accountability, the Corruption Perception Index jumped from 117 to 120 last year and in this recent report it had now shot to 124, she lambasted.

66.8 per cent people see Imran government’s accountability drive as biased and partisan. 86 per cent people believe that Imran Khan’s government is not interested in self-accountability. Over 93 percent people say that the PTI government has increased inflation rate far more than the preceding governments of the PML-N and PPP. 86 per cent people of Pakistan say that their income had shrunk significantly over the past 3 years under PTI government. 5.5 million people have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate is the highest in the history.