Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit Baltistan (GB) Ali Amin Khan Gandapur Tuesday said the opposition parties were spewing venom against the national institutions to evade accountability process and protect their looted money.
Addressing a public meeting at Ghanche, Gandapur said Prime Minster Imran Khan had made it clear that the accountability process against the corrupt elements would continue regardless of their protests.
Terming the opposition parties’ leaders as ‘opportunists’, he said they just wanted to loot public money and gain benefits by coming into the power.
He urged the GB’s people to use ‘power of the vote’ for their upcoming generations by casting vote to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI).
The party, after coming into the power in GB, would carry out massive development work in the area, besides creating maximum job opportunities for its people, he added.
Reiterating the PTI government’s strong commitment of giving a provisional-provincial status to the GB, Gandapur said the initiative would begin a new era of development and prosperity in the area that suffered due to slackness of the past regimes.
The minister said the GB people’s forefathers had rendered great sacrifices for its liberation, however, unfortunately the governments chosen by them in the past did not recognize their sacrifices.
“Prime Minister Imran Khan is the first leader in history of Pakistan who has taken the decision for granting provisional-provincial status to the GB by taking cognizance of its people’s sufferings,” he noted.
Amin regretted that the GB dwellers had been deprived of their constitutional rights for the last 73 years, adding the prime minister had a vision to uplift the less-developed areas like GB and Federally Administered Tribal areas (FATA).
“The credit for FATA merger goes to Prime Minister Imran Khan,” he remarked and pointed out that the present government had given Rs 400 billion for removing sense of deprivation from the people of FATA.
He said both the parties including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) had governed the GB in the past but did not own its residents.
The minister said contrary to the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Sindh government had refused to give FATA’s share in previous National Finance Commission (NFC) Award.
He believed that the opposition parties would never give them their share in the NFC awards. “It is only Imran Khan who can ensure that FATA gets its share in NFC award,” he added.