Off and on, we read statements of people from rural areas of Balochistan in our news columns complaining that the Government had ignored their respective areas and the people are denied basic facilities and services even after a lapse of six decades. Mostly complaints are now against the chosen representatives of the people who are made masters of all the uplift schemes—Rs 250 million during the current fiscal year. They had been asked to identify schemes from Public Sector Development Programme worth around Rs 200 million and Rs 50 million for their MPAs development fund. Thus Rs 250 millions are at the disposal of each MPA, the bulk money of the NFC Award is at the disposal of the MPAs with no monitoring and no check and balance from any corner.
Two senior citizens and highly respectable notables from Ahmedwal, a huge human settlement near Naushki, and its surrounding area visited this office and informed the details about the uplift schemes and claimed massive corruption which had no parallel in the political history of Balochistan. The complaints included that the contracts were awarded at the whims of the chosen representatives and there is no transparency in it. In most of the cases, all the proposed work had been done on papers only and not on the ground and the officials is asked to make the payment or face transfer. Thus the public servants are intimidated specifically if they resisted in releasing the funds to the dubious characters.
Secondly, the students from the girls schools are the clear victims because their teachers are aliens and not from their respective villages or from neighbourhood. The outsiders are appointed as teachers in the schools and in the initiating period, they report to the schools for a month and two and later on they become ‘ghost teachers’ merely drawing salaries with the help of officials. All the teachers appointed on the recommendations from the chosen representatives or very powerful personalities. Local teachers are ignored merely because they had no one to defend their interest in the Government or in the administration.
Thirdly, the healthcare is in complete shambles and local doctors—from top to bottom—are fleecing the patients and their relatives on different pretext and rendering no service to the ailing humanity. Money motive is dominating in the healthcare system in Naushki and its surrounding where the patients and their relatives are fleeced with both hands. Government hospital and dispensaries are good for nothing and the official doctors rarely report to their duty. Some doctors do attend the hospital merely to recruit more and more patients for their private clinics. There is a need for improvement in good governance and the Chief Minister should institute an inquiry or make monitoring the schemes compulsory in the interest of transparency and judicious use of public money. The resources the province got under the NFC Award should not be allowed to go waste. It is a crime against the society and humanity and this crime should be checked on priority basis.
We hope that the Prime Minister of Pakistan will induct the Prime Minister’s Inspection Team in monitoring all the schemes concluded by the MPAs or through the Planning and Development Department of Balochistan. They should ensure that the money got from the Federal Government are spent on welfare of the people and it should not be allowed to go into pockets of the individuals, mainly influential people, including Ministers. The Federal Finance Minister should take a serious notice to this fact that the resources Balochistan got had not been properly utilized. He should dispatch high powered teams of experts and officials to see whether the public money had been used judiciously or not.
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