According to a report on Sunday by Dawn News, Pakistani lawyers have declared a one-day strike for Monday in protest of skyrocketing electricity costs and rising prices for necessities like petroleum products. The Peshawar Bar Association’s general body meeting, presided over by president Ishfaq Ahmad Khalil, made a decision.
According to Pakistan-based newspaper, the participants included members of the association, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council (KPBC) and Peshawar High Court Bar Association (PHBCA).
The news daily reported that the PHBCA, with the approval of the KPBC, announced the boycott of all courts in the province on Sept 4 and took out a rally from district courts to the Rehman Baba Chowk near the provincial assembly’s building via the Khyber Road.
The PBA office-bearers and members spoke at the meeting and warned the government that lawyers would start a protest movement across the province that would later spread to other regions of the country if exorbitant electricity and natural gas bills weren’t withdrawn and petroleum prices weren’t reduced. The speakers declared that lawyers would launch a protest movement on the model of their 2007 agitation against a military ruler for the supremacy of the Constitution and upholding the rule of law because they wouldn’t stand for the government’s “oppressive” policies. Pakistan also observed a day of inactivity on Saturday in protest of rising prices and inflated electricity bills.