Qureshi for empowering people of south Punjab

LAHORE: PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi has stressed the need to empower the people of southern Punjab who are struggling for basic necessities of life.

Flanked by Khusro Bakhtiyar, a leading figure of former Junoobi Punjab Mahaz (South Punjab Front), the PTI leader while talking to the media said the PML-N government had ignored the southern belt of the province due to which sense of deprivation was on the rise there.

Stressing for quota in every sector for north and southern parts of Punjab to create a balance of resources, he said practical measures should be taken for Siraiki region. He said Punjab was a province with a population of 11 crore and it wasn’t easy to run this huge province together.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi went on to say that southern Punjab produced 85pc of the total cotton of Pakistan which constituted 69pc of the country export but the economic situation of this area was awful.

The PTI leader said Shahbaz Sharif had been ruling Punjab for two decades and asked what he had done for southern part of Punjab. He said allocating resources and providing them to people were two different things. Qureshi asked the government to tell people where was the secretariat the CM had pledged to set up in this part and what had been the working of the committee that was set up under Punjab Governor Rafique Rajwana to look after the interests of southern Punjab. Sardar Balakh Sher Mazari, head of the South Punjab Front, Sardar Nasar Ullah Dareshak, Basit Sultan Bokhari and others were also present on the occasion.