Pakistanis go hungry as economic troubles bite

ISLAMABAD (AFP)


Spiralling food and fuel prices, power outages lasting at least six hours a day, a plummeting stock market and soaring inflation have all caused mounting anger in the unstable nuclear-armed nation of 160 million people.

“We eat bread with tea for breakfast and supper, we cannot afford lunch,” Zaman, 30, told AFP at the family’s dingy one-room house in a village just outside Islamabad.

His 7,000-rupee (98-dollar) monthly wage as a government stenographer renders them middle-class by Pakistani standards. But now he cannot afford to buy fruit — the only treat his elder son Taha and seven-month-old Talhar used to have.

“The children are always hungry,” said Hijran, his 19-year-old wife.

“The elder one goes out like a scavenger and picks up pieces of fruit or bread in the street. I used to stop him but now at least it means he gets something, even if it is just a rotten apple,” she said.

AFP