Nation should adopt austerity as a cultural norm: Khawaja Asif

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Defence Khawaja Muhammad Asif has said the nation, especially traders, should adopt austerity measures as a cultural norm to reduce wastage of fuel and electricity amid soaring economic challenges.

Addressing a press conference, the minister urged the nation to support the government for achieving normalcy through hard economic decisions.

Khawaja Asif said the traders must accept new timings of closure decided by the federal cabinet to reduce electricity consumption and fuel usage.

“We can control the price hike through internal measures, such as austerity. However, at the national level neither the previous governments nor the societal factions adopted austerity to control unnecessary expenses,” he added.

The minister while commenting on general behaviour towards commodity usage said the public style of oil, water, gas and other consumptions fall under wastage.

“We need a collective response and approach to address the prevailing economic issues. Rest assured that the government will play its role in protecting the masses and will take every possible step to ensure relief,” he underlined.

The minister urged the masses to adopt austerity as it was the only solution at the moment amid limited available resources. He said families and individuals after decline in income adopt austerity and it should become part of our culture.

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He assured the media that under the leadership of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif the coalition government was taking the responsibility to reduce inflation and impacts of the economic issues.

The Defence Minister pointed out that if Ukraine-Russia war ended then the fuel prices would nosedive and benefit our economy. “We have limited resources and are also a nuclear power which is the deterrence that helped us survive all crises”.

Asif lambasted the fuel hoarders said the profiteers who exploit economic crisis and problems of the poor started stockpiling amid decision of fuel price hike.

He added that there were dozens of companies in the public sector that were not privatized due to previous regimes incompetence and were incurring US$2.5 billion losses.

“These public companies should be governed by private partners and this bleeding of resources must stop which is going for over past four decades. Employees should be given a handsome golden handshake so that they may live a suitable life after privatization without any economic loss”, he suggested.

Change habits

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Qamar Zaman Kaira said that it was the need of the hour to change national habits to save the energy and come out from the current power and gas crisis.

He said that people should follow simplicity and austerity in their life style. “Without the support of people the government could not survive so it was the major responsibility of all stakeholders to adopt simple ways in their life to cope with current crisis,” he added.

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“Only political powers could address the longstanding issues of the state and lead the county to the path of development for a bright future of the masses.”

He said the government was taking hard decisions because national exchequer could not afford more subsidies, he added He thanked the people who had accepted these hard decisions for the sake of the country.

Kaira also appealed the traders to support the government’s decision for early market closures to save the energy for others and overcome this issue.

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