Policy on Afghanistan: Sherpao calls for Pakhtun leadership’s input

CHARSADDA: Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) Chairman Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao on Friday said the Pakhtun leadership should be taken into confidence before making any policy about Afghanistan as it affected the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Addressing a gathering at Tangi tehsil here, he said the government should seek input from the Pakhtun leadership as coming up with a policy lacking their suggestions later on created problems.

Commenting on the fresh increase in the power tariff, Aftab Sherpao demanded the government to conduct an audit of the agreements reached with the independent power producers as he believed the deals were mainly investor-friendly. He maintained that the government should address the issue of the line losses to give relief to the bill-paying consumers instead of burdening them.

Advising the people, particularly the youth to think about the country’s future before casting their votes, he said the ones, who had raised hollow slogans and made empty pledges, left the country in dire financial straits due to their incompetence and lack of vision.

About the freshly conducted delimitation, the QWP leader said that ideally this exercise should have been conducted a year before the holding of the general election so that the candidates had enough time to reach out to the electorate. He remarked that at present political parties had little time left for canvassing.

He maintained that some political parties had reservations about the fresh delimitation due to the fact that candidates would have less time to run their election campaigns.

Though the Election Commission of Pakistan has announced the holding of the election in January next year, the caretaker government was yet to create an environment conducive to the conduct of the polls, he said. He added the law and order was deteriorating hampering the efforts by the candidates to run their election campaign.

The QWP leader said though the country’s economy was stabilised to some extent, it was still facing tough economic challenges and it would take considerable time and effort to turn around the economy.

He said the gulf between the cash-strapped KP and the Centre was widening as the province was not getting its due share in resources, underscoring the need for collective wisdom to address the challenges.