Eliminate perks

This letter refers to the news report ‘Crackdown on power thieves begins’ (September 8, 2023). These types of measures have been a demand of the IMF to contain the budget deficit. Two decades of IMF support should have been enough for Pakistan to break free from mounting debt. However, due to our extremely undisciplined spending and lack of stringent fiscal measures, we always run out of money a few years after each bailout and have to go into another programme with the IMF. We are yet to escape this cycle.

This time around, the IMF has come down hard on Pakistan, not because they want ordinary people to suffer, but because they have identified leakages, inefficiencies and losses. The multilateral lender ought to be a last resort, but for Pakistan it has become a permanent lifeline of sorts. We need to gradually eliminate the unnecessary privileges and perks being offered to all sorts of organizations and their employees that help drive our reckless spending.

Anas A Khan

Edmonton

Canada