Farmers in Pakistan will hold protests in a number of towns, urging international lenders to cancel loans to the country and other developing nations and compensate Pakistan for economic losses brought on by climate change.
Farooq Tariq, the general secretary of the Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee, and others announced at a press conference held here on Tuesday that protest marches on Thursday in Lahore, Karachi, Multan, Toba Tek Singh, Shikarpur, and other cities, which would coincide with the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Morocco.
According to the protesters, they would also like to see money allocated for the rehabilitation of flood victims in the Punjabi districts of Kasur, Pakpattan, and Depalpur.
They claimed that IMF and World Bank policies had failed globally and had increased poverty and inequality rather than decreasing them because these lenders forced governments of impoverished nations to put more taxes on the poor and raise taxes on utilities to pay government expenses, Dawn reported.
They claimed that the two organisations had created a net of indebtedness in collaboration with other lenders that had caused economic collapse and pushed hundreds of thousands of people into poverty, Dawn reported.
The leaders of the farming world regretted that these impoverished nations were not being compensated for the losses resulting from the climate disruption caused by the fossil fuel projects they funded in the countries that had no part in this catastrophe.They asked that Islamabad immediately cease repaying its foreign debt and instead use the money saved to support the underprivileged sections of society and assist farmers who had suffered financial losses as a result of the recent rains.