Lahore: Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Emir Engineer Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has strongly criticized the government's marginal reduction in petroleum prices, calling it anti-people and shameful, and demanded that fuel prices be brought in line with pre-war levels in the international market. He also announced that Jamaat-e-Islami would unveil a schedule of nationwide protests within the next 48 hours, urging the public to take to the streets to claim their rights.

Reacting to the government's decision to reduce petrol prices by only Rs1.97 per litre, Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said the move was deeply disappointing and failed to provide meaningful relief to inflation-hit citizens.

In a statement posted on X, Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said the government's decision amounted to depriving the public of its rightful benefit despite the decline in global oil prices. He said the ruling authorities were protecting their lavish expenditures and covering up their incompetence at the expense of ordinary Pakistanis.

The Jamaat-e-Islami chief maintained that fuel prices in Pakistan should be adjusted according to international oil prices, which, he said, have returned to pre-war levels. He argued that the government's refusal to pass on the full benefit to consumers was unjustifiable.

Hafiz Naeemur Rehman further said that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had become a hub of corruption and added the government was collecting extortion from poor and middle-class citizens under the guise of the petroleum levy. "This exploitation can no longer continue," he said, adding that the people would have to come onto the streets to secure their rights.

Announcing the party's next course of action, Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said Jamaat-e-Islami would declare a nationwide protest campaign within the next 48 hours to press the government for substantial cuts in petroleum prices and an end to what he described as unjust taxation on fuel.