PPP lawmaker stages sit-in outside LG office

Claims political opponents have allocated fewer funds for his constituency

PESHAWAR: A sitting lawmaker from the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party has taken up perch outside the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Local Government department in Peshawar to demand his due share in development funds.

“I belong to [Upper] Dir and I will not leave the place until he (Minister for Local Government Inayatullah Khan) provides my constituency with its due share in developmental funds,” Sahibzada Sanaullah told The Express Tribune adding that he would continue his sitting outside the Civil Secretariat in Peshawar, even taking to sleeping on the footpath until his demands are fulfilled.

On the boundary wall of the local government department, he has put up a few placards inscribed with slogans against the K-P government for denying his constituency with due developmental funds.

The lawmaker had been associated with the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), but had contested by-elections for PK-93 Upper Dir-III on a PPP ticket in the by-polls and beat the JI candidate.

Currently, he is giving a tough time to JI members in the K-P assembly where he does not spare any chance of criticising them and the party’s political role in upper and lower Dir.

Sitting on a plastic mat outside the gate of the Civil Secretariat, he told The Express Tribune that since Inayatullah is affiliated with the JI, he was deliberately withholding developmental funds for his constituency.



However, he had hired a lawyer and submitted a petition to the Peshawar High Court to get his due right. The court too decided in Sanaullah’s favour.

“They (the local government department) are not following the orders of the Peshawar High Court,” the PPP lawmaker claimed, adding that the behaviour of the department and the local government minister apparently backtracking from his promises of releasing funds for PK-93, had forced him to stage the sit-in.

The local government department is running a programme called “Uplift of rural roads in districts Dir Upper and Dir Lower.” for which the government has allocated a fund.

However, Sanaullah contended that the fund has been divided unequally among the seven constituencies in the two districts.

The lawmaker claimed that two constituencies belonging to opposition members had received just Rs130 million under the programme. By comparison, government lawmakers from the area had received over Rs250 million.

“I will sit here until they accept the decision of the high court and my people get their actual share,” he vowed, adding that the Local Government secretary and Inayatullah had visited his sit-in for negotiations, offering to increase his share if he ends the protest.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2017.