NEVER before has one witnessed such an intense and unanimous sense of anguish, anger and aversion amongst the ordinary people that we see today against the wasteful squandering of state resources, extracted from the poor and gifted on a platter to please and pamper the rich.

The wasteful vehicular extravaganza of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) worth Rs6 billion, and the parliamentarians` pay jump to Rs519,000 per month are the two recent examples of this wasteful imprudence.

While pushing for a massive raise in their own salaries, did it never occur toour parliamentarians that the minimum wage of 90 million workers was raised only by 15 per cent (from Rs32,000 to Rs37,000)? Even that is denied to 60pc of the workers. Do they not know that the 12,000 sanitation workers of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board still receive illegal wages between Rs16,000 and Rs20,000 per month? Are they not aware that one million security guards of private companies are made to work for 12 hours a day at one-third of their legally entitled wage? Have they never seen railway coolies, who must surrender one-third of their daily wage to an officially appointed contractor every day? Did no one inform them of the 237 coal miners who lost their lives in 2024 because the state spent more time (and money) on gratifying the already privileged instead of improving the safety of mines and the wellbeing of the miners? Pakistan ought to relinquish all wasteful indulgences, including the recent ones, and make a law that the salary of no government official would be more than five times the minimum legal wage notified for an ordinary worker. Pakistan`s progress is seriously dependent on the wellbeing of its people, and not the ones seeking mighty pay-raise and luxury vehicles.

Naeem Sadiq Karachi ruiror clllommo