LAHORE, Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan, Senator Sirajul Haq, has condemned the government notification transferring the control of five regulatory bodies to their respective ministries terming it an anti-people decision, and has called for its immediate withdrawal.
Talking to the media outside the parliament on Tuesday, he said the Prime Minister had acted against the Supreme Court decision that bound him to decide matters through his cabinet and not in person.
The JI chief said that this move would end the autonomy of the regulatory bodies and give free hand to the government to raise the prices/ tariff of electricity, gas, telephone and etc. The authority to fix the prices of these items would go to the government as would increase corruption and incompetence. The transparency in these matters would end and the general public would be burdened under more taxes and higher prices of utilities.
He said that the Prime Minister had lowered the status of his cabinet and also weakened the democratic system by this decision.
Sirajul Haq said that these regulatory bodies had been set up to protect the interest of the consumers, to end monopolies, for the stability of the privatized institutions, and to give a free hand to these in decision making.
He said the Nawaz government had placed this item on the agenda of the Council of Common Interests(CCI), to obtain the provinces’ opinion but later dropped it fearing opposition by the provinces. In this way, this was a calculated attempt by the Prime Minister to usurp the provinces rights which was highly condemnable. .
