Recently, a political storm has erupted in the country after senior minister Maryam Aurangzebs insensitively addressed the provincial government’s purchase of a luxury gulfstream jet. The 19 seater aircraft, estimated over Rs 10 billion was bought for Punjab’s chief minister Maryam Nawaz’s personal use which triggered criticism from opposition parties and general public on social media. Responding to that, Maryam Aurangzeb stated that it was a rightful purchase and that CM did absolutely the right thing.

Rs10 billion spent on a jet for a CM while half of this country is drowning below the poverty line. In a nation where millions of families can't afford two proper meals a day, where children sleep hungry and parents choose between medicine and roti, the government decided that a Rs10 billion private aircraft was the priority.

Not hospitals. Not schools. Not relief for people who are literally begging for their basic needs like shelter and food.

This isn't "governance." This is robbery. It's looting taxpayer money that was supposed to feed the hungry, heal the sick and educate the next generation and blowing it on leather seats and luxurious vehicles. The message is clear to the general public; your hunger doesn't matter. Your empty stomach doesn't matter. Your struggle to afford flour, gas, and rent doesn't matter. The state buys comfort for the elite while the public struggles to survive, it's a slap in the face to every citizen fighting to survive. 

Rs10 billion didn't disappear. It was stolen from you and burned on a luxury jet while this country and it’s people bleed.  

Where that money should have been spent:

• 2 million starving families could have had food for at least half a year. Instead, your taxes filled a jet's fuel tank while children went to bed hungry. Shameful.

• That money could have facilitated building rural health centers or 50,000 life-saving treatments could have been made free like cancer, dialysis, heart surgeries for people who are currently told "go home and die" because they’re poor.

• 100,000 kids out of school could have had their fees paid and buy books.1,000 broken government schools could have had roofs, toilets, and fans. But no, the elite needed leather seats more than your child needed a classroom. 

• thousands of clean water plants in villages where people still drink filth and get sick every summer. You're dying of thirst and disease while they sip imported water sitting in their luxurious jet.

• Many young Pakistanis could have gotten Rs 35k-50k to start a business, a shop, a cart. A chance to live with dignity instead of begging. But the government chose to fund their own comfort, not your future.