West Pakistan politicos looted Bengalis, says Pak politician

Accusing politicians of causing a great harm to the country, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak recently endorsed Bangladesh founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's statement that Islamabad's roads were probably being built through revenue earned from Chittagong's jute fields.

"Sheikh Mujeeb was very right in saying that we, the politicians from West Pakistan, looted Bengalis and deprived them of their rights. The pace of development is fast in Bangladesh now as they have improved their system of governance and are now among few developing nations," reports The Express Tribune reports on Sunday quoting Khattak.

Pervaiz Khattak was addressing different public gatherings in Ghazi, Haripur and Havelian areas.

He on Saturday said politicians were responsible for harming the social and economic fabric of the country as they introduced corruption and nepotism, took 'commissions' in uplift schemes of public welfare and meddled in the affairs of government departments. "Even our enemy India has failed to do in the last 70 years what we have done to this country," he said.

Khattak said transparency, good governance, honest leadership and elimination of corruption and 'sifarish culture' were the key ingredients of pro-people policy and real development.

He said the ANP-led previous coalition government in K-P handed the PTI a province, riddled with imbroglios of destructed infrastructure, terrorism, targeted killings, kidnapping and corruption.

"They [the ANP government] were selling tenders of road construction for 10% commission. They also sold jobs in police, health, education and revenue departments," Khatak said. However, he said, the PTI was voted to power for bringing change and it has brought about desired changes within three years.

Referring to his government's Right to Services law, he said it was meant to end 'sifarish' and corruption from government departments but this goal could only be achieved when the people cooperate with the government by pinpointing the corrupt and gathering evidence against them.

He said the PTI government had hired 40,000 new teachers for filling the vacant posts in schools and appointed doctors and nurses in hospitals. He said the government allocated Rs12 billion for providing missing facilities in the educational institutions and Rs12 billion for increasing doctors' salaries.  "In order to improve healthcare facilities, obsolete and out of order hospital machinery will be brought by December this year," he added.

He expressed confidence that the PTI would again return to power with the support of the masses. The way his government had delivered has no precedence in the country's 70-year history. While announcing development schemes for Haripur district, the CM approved a medical college in Ghazi tehsil, announcing Rs300 million for different developmental schemes and upgrading of Ghazi Hospital.

He also announced construction of higher secondary school for girls in Kotehra union council, upgrading of Khanpur as tehsil, Rs150 million for beautification of Haripur city, land for graveyards and acceleration of construction work on Rs290 millions project of Women and Children Hospital Haripur.

PTI media cell denies reference to the then East Pakistan

When contacted, the head of the PTI Central Media Department Iftikhar Durrani denied Khattak made any statement mentioning East Pakistan or Mujibur Rehman. He referred to the official PTI handout of Khattak's address wherein there was no mention of the statement in question. Durrani added that PTI owns 'whatever is written in the official handout'.