Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has directed the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leadership in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to suspend long-term development projects and prioritise short-term welfare measures, saying people in the province need immediate relief.
“Long-term projects should be suspended. If you take small steps to improve law and order, build a school and ensure medicines reach hospitals, people who have been deprived for 13 years will pray for you,” he said while addressing a meeting of the PML-N’s KP parliamentary party in Islamabad on Saturday.
The prime minister criticised the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s thirteen years in power, questioning how many universities, hospitals and schools had been built and how public funds had been spent. He said slogans, protests and confrontation had taken precedence over public service.
He defended the imposition of governor’s rule and emergency in KP on 11 October as unavoidable, saying the Centre had first pursued negotiations. A committee of PPP and PML-N members held talks for 48 hours and finalised a draft, he said, but approval from then-chief minister Sohail Afridi never came.
On terrorism funding, he recalled the 2010 National Finance Commission Award, under which KP received about Rs800 billion in an additional one per cent allocation for its war-on-terror circumstances. He asked how many Safe City projects had been built with it, why around 5,000 police posts remained vacant, and why the Counter Terrorism Department had not been properly equipped and trained.
He also pointed to Daanish Schools being set up in Chitral, Haripur, Mansehra, Bajaur and Shangla, with more campuses to follow later this year. A fuel subsidy programme worth Rs75 billion is benefiting about thirteen million people through vouchers, according to Business Recorder.
The prime minister urged PML-N lawmakers from KP to focus on the basic needs of people in their constituencies, saying short-term welfare projects could help turn people’s fortunes around within six months to a year.
KP has been under governor’s rule since 11 October, with Governor Faisal Karim Kundi exercising the province’s functions with an advisory council. Read the background on parliament’s approval here.
