About time Pashtuns get their rights: Sherpao

QWP chief stresses need for implementing reforms in merged districts

CHARSADDA: Qaumi Watan Party President Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao repeating his party’s stance on the rights of Pashtuns has said that the time has come for the state to play its role in addressing the challenges and issues faced by the Pashtuns.

He was addressing a gathering on the occasion of the 44th death anniversary of Shaheed Hayat Muhammad Khan Sherpao in the village of Sherpao in Charsadda.

QWP supporters had come from all over the province to pay tribute to the founding member of Pakistan Peoples Party, a companion of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and governor of the then NWFP, who was assassinated in a targeted bomb attack at University of Peshawar in 1975.

Sherpao said that his father, Hayat Sherpao, had devoted his life to the struggle for the rights of the oppressed and poor class of the society. Sherpao promised that the QWP will not back off from the struggle to help the Pashtuns win their rights.

Sherpao lamented that the Pashtun region had been facing bloodshed since the past four decades during which thousands of innocent people had lost their lives while millions were rendered homeless. He said that the war in the region had affected the social fabric of the Pashtuns.

Speaking about QWP’s recent attempts to merge all Pashtuns together on one platform, he said that his party had tried its level best to unite the Pashtuns. Sherpao stressed on implementing the Fata reform and merger in its true meaning and demanded that the police and judicial system along with the formation of regular courts be carried out immediately so that the people of the tribal areas can reap its benefit.

Sherpao criticised the PTI government saying that all promises made by the ruling party during the elections had been negated with an increase in the prices of electricity, gas and life-saving drugs.

The gathering was also addressed by
the QWP’s general secretary Haider Zaman, Dr. Syed Alam Mehsood, Aneesa Zaib, Habib-ur-Rehman Tanoli and National Party’s Mukhtar Bacha, Tariq Khan and others.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 14^th, 2019.