Zardari won’t let govt make privatisation a private affair

Pakistan People’s Party Co-chairman and former president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday asked his party leaders to keep an eye on the privatisation policies of the government and raise voice against crony capitalism, lack of transparency and throwing out of workers from jobs.

“The party must not permit any policy that is not labour friendly,” Zardari said while reviewing organisational matters of the party during a meeting at Zardari House. The meeting also discussed strategy about the forthcoming local bodies’ (LB) polls and outlined the party’s policies on issues confronting the nation.

A 50-member delegation of senior party leaders led by PPP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa President Khanzada Khan, former ministers and MPs Arbab Alamgir Khan, Humayun Khan, Liaquat Shabab, Najmuddin Khan, Lal Khan and Tariq Khattak, former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, Senator Raza Rabbani and other office bearers of PPP’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) chapter attended the meeting.

Spokesperson to the former president Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the former president emphasised upon vigorous campaigning for the LB polls to retrieve the ground that the party was made to lose in the last general elections through ‘calculated manoeuvring’. Zardari advised the party cadres to give attention to the membership drive and ensure party’s organisation at all tiers. He directed that arrangements be based on broad-based consultations within the party, keeping in view the principles for which the party had sacrificed several lives.

Moreover, the former president paid tribute to the party workers and other ‘democratic’ workers who were sacrificed in the fight against militancy. He paid special tribute to Hangu school student Aitzaz Hasan, terming him ‘national hero’ in the fight against militancy and said that Hassan had willingly sacrificed his life to save the lives of hundreds of his school fellows. Aitizaz’s supreme sacrifice will help correct the distortion introduced in the debate by some parties about the fight against militants and religious fanatics, he said.

Zardari also directed Raja Pervez Ashraf and Raza Rabbani to visit KP and hold on ground meetings with party workers to ascertain their views and address their grievances.