LAHORE - The speakers at a seminar organized by The Nation Forum at Hameed Nizami Hall have urged the government to make the basic necessities of life accessible for the masses who are living a miserable life due to ever-increasing price hike in the country. The participants of the seminar who spoke on occasion included Pakistan Workers Federation general secretary Khurshid Ahmed, Pakistan Peoples Party leader Zakaria Butt, traders leader Ashraf Bhatti and Amin Mazhar Butt. The speakers said that government has fixed the minimum salary at Rs 6,000 but the private sector has not increased the salaries of their staff yet this year. If some have raised, they are very few and moreover they increased the wages only by 10 to 12 per cent instead of 20 per cent as was lifted by the public sector, they added. They said that usually it is considered that the public, traders, dealers, millers and the government all are responsible for the inflation but actually the blame should go only to the government for price hike which has claimed to seize hundreds of thousands of sugar bags but could not let the rate go down. They said that Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah has donated his whole property to the nation but our politicians and higher authorities are always trying to loot their public. They suggested the government to ban on ACs in the offices all over the country including the president and prime minister houses. They also urged the traders community to keep the markets closed early to conserve energy as in developed countries all over the world all shopping plazas and the markets are closed near sunset. In this way the energy saved by the traders can be converted to the industry as well as for the domestic use, they added. They quoted the Transparency International and said that corruption has increased by at least 400 per cent for the last two years.