PAKISTAN Muslim League-Quaid leader Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi has said Punjab is under a heavy debt of over Rs100 billion and the provincial government’s announcement in the recently concluded Punjab Assembly session of bringing the provincial overdraft back to zero by June 30 has proven to be a blatant lie.

Talking to senior party leaders here on Thursday, Pervaiz alleged that the corrupt rulers, after rendering Punjab bankrupt, were busy in illegal squandering of local government’s funds. He called the act of the Punjab government criminal as the local government’s funds were meant for solving the problems at the grassroots level.

He said the failure of the government in controlling the devastation during the monsoon was due to the non-availability of funds at the local level.

He said that during his five years as chief minister, he had made all-out efforts to financially empower the local government for the good of masses but the present rulers had left no stone unturned in making the local government dysfunctional.

Pervaiz said the ruling mafia was all set to hit the poor with a new flood of inflation during Ramazan. He alleged that the Punjab government of being a collaborator with the food mafia and that it was profiteering at the expense of the helpless of the province.

The PML-Q leader strongly condemned the Punjab government’s failure in curbing crime and said that only in Lahore 273 robberies had taken place in the last four days.

He declared the success of the PML supported candidate in the by-election in PP-34 Sargodha historic and said that the result was indicative of a strong public dislike for N-League in Punjab.

He alleged that the chief minister’ senior henchmen had been deputed to replicate the Gujrat election rigging plan in Gujranwala. He said people of Gujranwala would frustrate such plans and reject the PML-N the same way it was rejected by people of Sargodha.