He noted that the official survey deliberately skipped the critical period of 2022 and 2024.
Shaikh Waqas Akram said that the first phase of the civil disobedience movement is ongoing and is aimed at Pakistanis living abroad. PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
LAHORE:
PTI Central Secretary Information Sheikh Waqas Akram has alleged that nine million more people have been pushed into poverty in Punjab while the government spent Rs 11 billion on a luxury plane.
He warned that the free fall of the country’s economy will continue until the public mandate is restored.
In a strong statement, Sheikh Waqas claimed that there was an obvious and suspicious black hole in the government’s data timeline.
He noted that the official survey deliberately skipped the critical period of 2022 and 2024, jumping from 2019 directly to 2025 and pooling six years of data in a calculated attempt to hide the economic devastation unleashed during the PDM’s first term.
The PTI leader claimed that the omission was deliberate and emphasized that the government hid the 2022-2023 figures because its transparent release would have shown that under the Imran Khan-led PTI government, the economy remained stable and achieved growth of around 6% despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said this hard-won progress was systematically dismantled by the current rulers after toppling the well-performing PTI government through “a regime change conspiracy”.
He sharply criticized the government, accusing it of orchestrating a planned humanitarian disaster through incompetence, ineptitude, short-sightedness and selfish royal behaviour, which, he said, had pushed millions of Pakistani families into hunger and desperation amidst grinding inflation and sharp erosion of public purchasing power.
Sheikh Waqas said the economic devastation was reflected in the government’s own recently released poverty survey. “The figures released by the Planning Ministry are not just statistics; they are a charge sheet against the PDM-2 regime,” Sheikh Waqas said.
“In just a few years, this government has reversed hard-won economic progress during the Imran Khan-led PTI government.” It noted that the national poverty rate had increased from 21.9% in 2018-19 to 28.8% in 2024-25.
