PESHAWAR, Mar 28 (APP): Political experts here on Tuesday said the 10-point agenda announced by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan at Minar-e-Pakistan had failed to grab people’s attention.
Terming the 10-point agenda of the PTI chief as a political gimmick, Ikhtiar Wali Khan, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa spokesman and former member provincial assembly (MPA) told APP that the 10-point agenda of Imran Khan had failed to draw peoples’ attention as the PTI government under his leadership had hardly provided any significant relief to the masses.
He claimed that Imran Khan’s agenda was yet another deception to cover his alleged corrupt practices and poor governance as evident from the Toshakhana and PTI’s foreign funding cases.
Wali said the PTI chairman, in his agenda, claimed to streamline the administrative and financial system despite the fact that his party government itself abolished its own created Ehtesab Commission at Peshawar to protect its corruption and skins.
He said the Billion Trees Afforestation Project (BTAP) had been taken over by NAB KP, which exposed the tall anti-corruption claims of the PTI leadership.
Wali deplored that unfortunately, Imran had remained busy with negative activities instead of concentrating on development projects and improving the governance and financial system in the country where PTI ruled.
He said the challenges of economic and political situations faced by the country today would have been better if Imran Khan had appointed competent and committed people as finance and chief ministers in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa instead of frequently reshuffling the cabinet members.
“Imran 10-point agenda is nothing but an old wine in new bottles,” said Hamaza Khan, PML-N Nowshera President while talking to APP. “Imran has largely talked about earning dollars through the promotion of tourism and mineral resources but failed to tell about the long delay in the groundbreaking of the four integrated tourism zones (ITZs) projects including Thandyani Abbottabad, Mankayal Swat, Madakhasat Chitral and Ghanol Manshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”
He said the slow pace of work on economic zones projects and grant of leases for mineral projects, besides waste of precious mines and mineral resources including marble and gemstones in KP spoke volumes of the PTI’s poor investment and policies.
He said that Pakistan was plunged into heavy loans burden by PTI rulers and no solid steps were taken for the socio-economic empowerment of the overseas Pakistanis.
On the other hand, he said the present coalition government had planned to send around one million skilled Pakistanis to foreign countries this year, besides establishing facilitation desks in all key airports to facilitate overseas Pakistanis.
Wali said that 16 countries including South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Romania, Portugal and Malta had shown keen interest in hiring services of Pakistanis’ manpower and since April last over 600,000 Pakistanis were sent abroad for employment by the incumbent government.
The allocation of a five percent quota for children of overseas Pakistanis studying in top educational institutions of the country and abroad and providing financial support to them in fees payment through the Higher Education Commission would greatly help provide relief to the overseas Pakistanis, he suggested.
Hamza Khan said the massive devastation caused by last year’s floods could have been averted had the PTI government constructed dams in its 10-year rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said many mini micro hydel power stations constructed in northern KP were washed away by last year’s floods.
“PTI had left KP on the verge of bankruptcy as many public sector universities were complaining about the shortage of funds to pay salaries and pensions to its employees,” he said, adding the country would have defaulted today had the Imran Khan government continued for a few more weeks.
Citing the Pakistan Economy Survey 2021-22 report, the PML-N leader said the PTI government had given away a record Rs1.76 trillion in tax exemptions to the affluent and foreign investors, taking the total cost of such exemptions in four years to a whopping Rs5.2 trillion, which was equal to 87% of the estimated tax collection by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) in the outgoing fiscal year.
He said Imran Khan had started the failed ‘Jail Bharo Tehreek’ to please his enraged supporters after PTI prematurely dissolved KP and Punjab assemblies, adding Imran’s Zaman Park drama also flopped after the Punjab police showed maximum restraint despite the provoking attitude of the PTI workers.
The experts said political unity was required to pull the country out of existing challenges and great responsibilities rest on the shoulders of PDM, PTI and other political parties to immediately start a grand dialogue for taking the ship of democracy to the safe shores.
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