Thursday, December 04, 2008

Where's the food mr. zardari?

On the footpath outside Sabir Hotel in Karachi, situated on the proximity of Jamia Cloth Market, off MA Jinnah Road, gather hundreds of poor people every day, anxiously waiting for some philanthropist to order free food for them.

A couple of years ago, only drug addicts would throng the hotel, but with inflation now at 24.5 per cent, large numbers of people from the working class and the lower middleclass, including women, are seen outside Sabir Hotel. Similar crowds can be seen in other parts of the city, where people wait for free food because they are unable to afford it with their meagre incomes.

"The exact figures will be available when the Economic Survey is published, but an estimated five per cent of the population has been added to below the poverty line in Pakistan," Dr Kaiser Bengali, an eminent economist told TSI. According to a UNDP report, 65.5 per cent of the 160 million population of Pakistan earns less than two dollars a day and they are defined as living below the poverty line....Continue

No comments: