PPP slates federal govt for allocating less funds for Sindh’s uplift schemes

KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) senior leader Shazia Marri has slated the federal government for allocating funds under its current Public Sector Development Programmes (PSDP) for the least number of uplift schemes in Sindh as compared to PSDP allocations for the rest of the provinces.

Speaking at a press conference here at the media cell of Bilawal House on Sunday, the PPP leader said the current PSDP carried allocations for merely seven development schemes to be built in Sindh with a cost of Rs77.2 billion.

In comparison, the Punjab got allocation for 34 uplift programmes under the PSDP with a value of Rs693.4 billion, she said. Marri added that the current PSDP carried allocations for 21 uplift schemes in Balochistan and 30 development projects in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

She told media persons that the PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had been highly concerned about issues persisting in the country and the unsatisfactory conduct of the federal government in tackling them.

She recalled the recent speech of Bilawal at the Benazir Bhutto death anniversary event at Garhi Khuda Bux, in which the PPP chairman had truly represented the masses of Pakistan by stating that people wanted political and economic stability and freedom and respite from economic inflation and poverty.

She lamented that people in the country were yet to get relief despite the government having presented impressive statistics related to the economic and financial state of the country.

Marri warned the federal government against unilaterally making decisions on important national issues without consulting the relevant stakeholders.

She said the plan to build six new canals to draw additional water from the Indus River was a unilateral decision of the federal government, which sheerly negated the 1991 Water Accord. She said the PPP had always raised its voice whenever the federal government had violated the Water Accord.

The PPP senior leader also lambasted the federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments for their utter failure to come to the emergency rescue of the strife-torn residents of Parachinar in the tribal belt of KPK.