‘Opening Harrods here only way to keep PM in country’

PTI chief says K-P govt performance in health, education better than Punjab

PESHAWAR: Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s prolonged stay in the UK, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan said on Sunday that opening a ‘Harrods’ store’ in Pakistan is the only way to keep the premier in the country.

He passed the remark while addressing a news conference at the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister’s House in Peshawar.



Accusing Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif of spending millions on a media campaign to boost his party’s image, Imran said his K-P counterpart Pervez Khattak proved PTI’s worth by delivering to the public instead of wasting money on image-building campaigns.

He added that the Punjab government had underperformed in the health and education sectors compared to K-P.

At the same time, however, Imran criticised the current K-P healthcare system and said the PTI government will reform it. “An extra Rs4 billion have been allocated to improve health centres and hospitals at the tehsil level,” he said, adding that the province’s overall healthcare system will placed under an autonomous board.

“Despite a decrease in funds received from the centre, the K-P government has increased the health budget from Rs8 billion to Rs25 billion,” Imran said. He said the ‘Sehat Ka Insaf’ cards have been distributed among 1.8 million families across K-P allowing each of them to spend up to Rs210,000 on healthcare.

“Health reforms will soon be introduced in K-P to provide better care to poor people,” the PTI chief said.

He rejected corruption charges against K-P Education Minister Atif Khan and Shakeel Durrani, saying that they would bring these cases to court.



According to Imran, as many as 2.2 million children were enrolled in seminaries while 800,000 were enrolled in English-medium schools.  He said the scholars running seminaries were ready to accept his party’s education reforms.

Most of the children from poor families are enrolled in seminaries and if the government ignored them, they could join IS, Imran said,

The PTI chief said that the provincial government had launched its madrassa reform initiative from Madrassa Darul Uloom Haqqania.

Later, Imran visited Shaukat Khanum Hospital in Peshawar to attend a fund raising program.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 27^th, 2016.