Crying foul: K-P govt blames centre for obstructing development

Finance minister provides facts and figures of ‘injustice’ towards province.

PESHAWAR:

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government fired a salvo at the federal government on Tuesday for failing to clear its outstanding dues.

The provincial government also criticised the centre for dragging its feet on the approval of several development projects for K-P and said it will “obtain its rights” after a consensus with all political parties.

“Amidst serious problems of law and order, and unemployment, we are unfortunately faced with a faction in the federal government that is prejudiced towards K-P,” said Finance Minister Sirajul Haq, who is a member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, in a press briefing at the Civil Secretariat.



“They (the centre) must learn from the 1971 tragedy and discontinue their bias towards us,” said Haq, who was accompanied by Minister for Information Shah Farman and Secretary Finance Syed Badshah Bukhari.

Haq said K-P was producing 18 billion units of power per year with per unit production as low as 90 paisas from the Tarbela dam. “Even then, K-P faces excessive power outages and now the federal government also wants to impose fuel price adjustment tax on the province,” he added.

Every year, the federal government has to pay Rs6 billion in net hydel profit to K-P but the province is yet to receive a single penny this fiscal year, said the finance minister, adding the amount has been capped at Rs6 billion from 1991-92 without any increase.

Haq alleged State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali never fails to humiliate the people of K-P in his press statements, but the provincial government must remind him that K-P suffers yearly power losses of 4.83 billion units while Punjab loses 8.53 billion units annually.

He said Punjab was taking advantage of the Ghazi Barotha project by having the production plants in their province while the environmental burden was being faced by K-P.

He said the federal government’s “drama” of banning CNG provision to the province for a month is unacceptable as the province produces 400 million cubic feet of gas per day and needs only 170 million.

All the big schemes meant for K-P exist only on paper and this has been the case for several years now, Haq said. He added that due to lack of infrastructure, the province is only utilising 5.78 million acre feet of water out its total share of 8.78 million acre feet. “So far, the outstanding dues under the water accord of 1991 against Punjab and Sindh amount to Rs84 billion, and we want its payment.”

K-P has so far only received Rs23 billion for losses incurred due to the law and order while the federal government gets billions from the Kerry-Lugar bill and from the Friends of Pakistan group, Haq added.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2013.