Khuzdar barred from Sui Gas facility
 Khuzdar barred from Sui Gas facility
Siddiq Baluch
Editor's Blog

QUETTA: More than 55 constituencies of elite politicians, influential people, all belonging to the ruling elite, will get Sui gas facilities and a formal approval had been accorded by the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Khuzdar, or the whole of Central Balochistan, the most centrally located and strategic countryside of Pakistan, is excluded from providing natural gas to the residents though gas was found in Balochistan and being used elsewhere.

QUETTA:  More than 55 constituencies of elite politicians, influential people, all belonging to the ruling elite, will get Sui gas facilities and a formal approval had been accorded by the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Khuzdar, or the whole of Central Balochistan, the most centrally located and strategic countryside of Pakistan, is excluded from providing natural gas to the residents though gas was found in Balochistan and being used elsewhere.

More than 29 major districts of Balochistan, out of 34, had been denied Sui gas facilities by designs. Khuzdar, one of the biggest districts of Pakistan, is including in the 29 districts.  Recently, the SSGC had announced to provide Sui Gas facilities to some 40 villages in the Naseerabad where one village of Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, the erstwhile Prime Minister of Pakistan, had been included.

Whenever Nawaz Sharif comes to power, he made it a point to use his discretionary powers at  massive level bypassing the National Assembly and the Federal Budget and allocated funds for uplift schemes to the people only close or personally loyal to him.

During his last visit to Quetta, he announced and launched Sui Gas scheme for the village of Mr. Mahmood Khan Achakzai and personally obliged him by treating as a good camp follower. On the contrary, he ignored the major development scheme for whole of Central Balochistan and refused to provide natural gas to Khuzdar region.

On that occasion, the Chief Minister, Nawab Sanaullah Zehri, accompanied by the sitting Finance Minister, Sardar Aslam Bizenjo, met the Prime Minister in Quetta and announced that his Government would install a small LPG Plan for a smaller locality of Khuzdar. Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif made Sui Gas available to the residents of Jamali and Achakzai and ignored the entire central Balochistan.

Even, the nearby township of Sorab, the hometown of Nawab Sanaullah Zehri, had been ignored and the SSGC refused to extend the pipeline and resisted all the moves to extend the pipeline during the past two decades or more. Even in Kalat and Mastung, the SSGC is resorting to massive load shedding and denying gas during the bitter and harsh cold nights.

The local residents had resorted to wall chalking in Kalat and Mastung regions condemning the SSGC discriminatory action against the local residents and denying them gas in bitter cold climate. Most of the walls in both the historic townships are full with slogans condemning gas load shedding and providing gas with minimum pressure.

After a decade, hundreds of firewood stalls again seen in the region as some people thought it a good business in absence of gas supply. Such a policy will endanger of Juniper forests in Kalat which is considered is the biggest in the world. It is spread over to more than 40 square kilometer areas of Harboi Hills.

He failed to be the Prime Minister of Pakistan doing justice to the smaller provinces or looking on their pressing economic needs. He ignored the development needs of Khuzdar which is believed to be one of the biggest centres of mineral wealth in the whole region besides being on the trade route liking two provinces of Sindh and Balochistan.

It had been found that the Prime Minister, despite a ban from the Supreme Court of Pakistan, is using discretionary powers and discretionary funds in obliging his camp followers, loyalists and supporters including Rs 180 billion economic and financial packages for the erstwhile Textile Mafia under the cover of exporters.

A couple of billions on the Khuzdar Gas Pipeline Project will explode economic opportunities to the local people opening up the area for trade, commerce and exploitation of mineral wealth.

The Baloch Members of Parliament should take up the issue at the sessions of the National Assembly and the Senate of Pakistan and seeking special allocation of funds for provision of Sui Gas for the entire Central Balochistan and Khuzdar, the second largest city of Balochistan, should be hub of all such activities.

They should press the Government to provide Sui gas facilities to Khuzdar and its surrounding human settlements of Nal and Wadh to boost economic activities and warming up their homes during the harsh winter nights.

The present PML Government had virtually sabotaged the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline Project and preferred the LNG projects of billions of dollars plunging the country deeper into an energy crisis. There were high hopes that the Iran-Pakistani gas pipeline will meet the basic requirements and needs of a portion of Balochistan, mostly in its western parts, once the pipeline is commissioned.

The first veto the PML-N Government applied on all those projects that could benefit Balochistan and its people including the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline and the buying bulk electricity from Iran for Balochistan, if not for the Punjab and Sindh.

Chagai, Mekran and Kharan regions of Balochistan were meant to benefit from this energy projects which were willfully sabotaged by the PML leaders and for known reasons. As long as the PML-N is ruling the Federal Government, there is no hope of major economic activities in the remote areas of Mekran, Kharan and Chagai or the regions bordering Iranian Balochistan.