phases. On 26 August, 2021, Services International Hotel in Lahore was auctioned at the highest bid of Rs1.951 billion. Public perception The privatisation programme still marks the question of "big" controversies. In public circles, it has generated much more heated debates where it is perceived to have more negative impact on civil society. The general perception remains highly contentious and polarising issue in the civil society, gearing up the negative sentiments among the population, including the continued injection of public money in many privatised entities and less than expected improvement in the services. Although, the programme produced a relatively faster and efficient way of promoting competition and enhancing growth, on the other hand, the programme experienced the exponential increase in unemployment, reducing the access of workers' class to the basic needs of life and contributed in declining the social status of workers' class in to poor get poorer. But on the other hand, a significant support for the privatisation programme has been raised in the media. In an editorial written in Dawn, it argues that the privatisation programme has been a key "constituent of structural reform" programmes in both, the developed and developing economies, in order to achieve greater microeconomic efficiency as opposed to macroeconomics. Overall, the GDP rate grows smoothly with privatisation programme remains in effect as opposed to nationalisation programme that it had dropped the GDP growth rate of Pakistan, Dawn maintained. Major proposals were made to privatise the major and most-profitable industries of Pakistan, namely the Pakistan Railways (PR) where The Express Tribune argued that the national railways' condition has gone from bad to worse under government ownership, and only privatisation programme can save the railways with the creation of sense of competition that would drive improvement. Adversary opposition Despite its success, the public sector organisations, labour and workers unions remained extremely hostile towards the privatisation programmes. In 2005, major demonstrations and worker's revolt took place in Islamabad by the PTCL Workers Unions Action Committee, in an attempt to privatized the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL). Despite the demonstrations the state-corporation was privatised by Shaukat Aziz which resulted in workers’ losing their jobs. In 2012, an unsuccessful attempt was carried out by current government of Pakistan Peoples Party when the government sought to privatise the mega-state corporations, particularly the power sector; major nationalised industries such as WAPDA, IESCo, TESCo, PEPCo were proposed by the finance ministry to