Lexus, Toshakhana and sanitation workers.

A chauffeur driven official vehicle, a Rs130 million luxury Lexus to be more exact, displaying green number plates and carrying a grade 20 government official drives through a crowded street. Purchased by depriving millions of their minimum legal wage, this obscene luxury government vehicle has not paid the road tax for last 12 years. What moral authority does any government have to collect taxes from its citizens if it does not pay its own taxes? The Lexus is just one of the 150,000 government vehicles that collectively consume over 12 billion rupees of taxpayer-sponsored fuel every month. This is just one of the numerous privileges given on a plate to an already pampered minority, now spitefully referred to as 'the elite'.

What is common between the elite capture of 150,000 government vehicles, the unscrupulous loot of Toshakhana gifts by every Pakistani leader and the millions of illegally underpaid and criminally exploited sanitation workers and private security guards. Indistinguishably interlinked, they represent the cause and effect of the same despicable 'disparity manufacturing' process. A small minority makes rules to legalise its own unlimited entitlements, privileges, perks, petrol, luxury vehicles, huge pensions, bloated salaries, disproportionate allowances, large residences, exclusive clubs, foreign visits and a licence to usurp the costly Toshakhana gifts, that in fact belong to the people of Pakistan.

The insatiable burden of this greedy minority is borne by the poorest, most downtrodden and exploited sections of the society. Not a single daily-wage sanitation worker in Sindh municipalities receives even the minimum legal wage and not a single private security guard in Pakistan receives the legal wages for a 12-hour shift. While the cursed elite flies off to foreign lands for minor physical ailments, the guards and sanitary workers are deprived of their daily wage even for a single day of sickness. While the elite has created schemes that entitle hefty lifetime pensions to themselves, their spouses and their second generations, not a single contracted sanitary worker or private security guard in Pakistan is registered to even the most inadequate EOBI programme. Compare...