New Delhi: It is not just the International Monetary Fund bailout that has Pakistan’s rapt attention. A garland of American dollars is making headlines in cash-strapped Pakistan that waits for global financial assistance. The garland in question was a wedding gift a minister in the Sindh province bestowed on his assistant at a time when the spectre of austerity looms large over Pakistanis.
Pakistani social media is brimming with reactions to visuals of Makhdoom Mehboobuz Zaman, the revenue minister in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government in Sindh, gifting his personal assistant Syed Saif Shah a garland of American dollars and a crown – wait for it — made of gold.
Reacting to visuals of Zaman standing proud alongside his assistant, one user wrote on Facebook, “We only can pray nothing else. Q (question) is who will start to change this shocking system. Look at life styles.”
“Jiye (live) Bhutto,” wrote another, sarcastically referring to Pakistan’s Foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is also chairperson of the PPP, the party in power in Sindh province.
Reports in Pakistani media quoted sources to suggest that the garland Zaman presented to his personal assistant was valued at over PKR 25,00,000 ($9,361/Rs 7.72 lakh). And that’s not all. The assistant also got a gold crown reportedly costing around PKR 8,00,000 ($2,995/Rs 2.47 lakh).
Zaman’s father Makhdoom Jamil Zaman is a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly and the leader of the Sarwari Jamaat, the second-largest religious order in the Sindh province.
This show of extravagance has rubbed many in Pakistan the wrong way, given that the federal government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is bending over backwards to break the impasse it has reached in its dealings with the IMF. Measures initiated to that effect include a PKR 50 hike in petrol prices, a surcharge of Rs PKR 3.23 per unit on electricity consumers across the country and the withdrawal of subsidies in power and export sectors.
Reacting to this show of extravagance by the minister’s assistant, a Facebook user asked: “Who will start to change this shocking system?”
As of Thursday, the exchange rate of one American dollar is PKR 267.06.
According to some estimates, the fiscal adjustments required for Pakistan to return to the IMF’s good books are likely to lead to higher inflation, which already hit a record high of 31.5 per cent year-on-year in February this year.
In January, the federal cabinet in Pakistan approved the National Energy Conservation Plan, which dictated the closure of markets by 8.30 pm and wedding halls by 10 pm. Defence minister Khawaja Asif had surmised that the plan would save the country “PKR 60 billion” by reducing Pakistan’s dependence on imported oil.
Looked at from the prism of the bed-ridden Pakistani economy for which an IMF bailout is its only shot at revival, Sindh revenue minister Zaman’s large-hearted gifting choice exposes a schism in Pakistani society amid the uptick in the cost of living. Glimpses of this schism — of the two Pakistans — came to the fore last month when many stared in shock at two pictures posted side-by-side, one of hundreds rummaging through each other to get a free bag of flour and the other, of hundreds, queuing outside the first outlet of premium Canadian coffeehouse Tim Hortons in Lahore.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)