Hungry Pakistanis

Economic woes have plunged millions of families in the South Asian Muslim country of 170 million below the poverty line. (Reuters)

"The children are always hungry," the 19-year-old mother of two told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Wednesday, July 30.

Helpless and weary, she lets her two-year-old son scrabble in the dirt for pieces of moldy fruit.

"The elder one goes out like a scavenger and picks up pieces of fruit or bread in the street," adds Hijran.  

"I used to stop him but now at least it means he gets something, even if it is just a rotten apple."

The family used to live as a middle-class, by Pakistani standards, on the husband's 7,000 rupee ($98) monthly wage as a government stenographer.

But now, with spiraling food and fuel prices, a plummeting stock market and soaring inflation, the salary is not enough to buy three meals a day.

"We eat bread with tea for breakfast and supper, we cannot afford lunch," said the husband, Fakharuz Zaman, sitting somberly in the family's dingy one-room house in a village just outside the capital Islamabad.

Economic woes have plunged millions of families in the South Asian Muslim country of 170 million below the poverty line.

According to government statistics, poverty rate currently stands at 28 percent while independent estimates put it at 40 percent.

The World Bank and the UN Development Program (UNDP) classify nearly one-quarter of the population as poor.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) warns that about 77 million Pakistanis are food insecure, a 28 percent increase from last year.

Unaffordable

The prices of food items have skyrocketed.

According to government statistics, the consumer price index was nearly 22 percent higher in June than a year earlier.

A kilogram of flour now costs 22 rupees, 70 percent up from last year, while a 49-rupee bag of rice is 123 percent dearer.

"They are sending wheat to Afghanistan while we have nothing to eat here," said an angry customer buying subsidized wheat at a crowded depot in the eastern city of Lahore.

"This is the situation under this government."

A wave of optimism had swept the country in February when the parties of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto and ex-premier Nawaz Sharif defeated allies of President Pervez Musharraf in general elections.

But the coalition government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilan has since been paralyzed by a growing rift between the two parties, leaving Pakistanis increasingly frustrated.

Angry traders ransacked the Karachi Stock Exchange earlier this month after stocks fell for the 15th straight day.

Bus and truck companies went on strike in Karachi and Peshawar last week to protest a 17 percent hike in fuel prices the government recently imposed.

Nasir Mehmood, a taxi driver, waits in a long queue at a state-run natural gas station in Islamabad every time he wants to fill up his car to save a few rupees on the soaring market price.

"Pakistan produces its own gas but the government has no control," he fumed, standing in a line of nearly 60 cars.

Analysts warn the situation could easily explode.

"The economic factor and this great slide and hyperinflation and the cost of living going up is affecting a far larger number of people in Pakistan than militancy," prominent political analyst Talat Masood told AFP.

Samina Ahmed, of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, says militant groups in the unstable, crises-hit nation could capitalize on economic troubles.

"Where there is unemployment and political disenfranchisement, these militants will be in a position to buy people as hired guns."