PTI’s ‘Naya Pakistan’ invisible in KP budget: Pervaiz

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf’s (PTI) ‘Naya Pakistan’ is invisible in the budget in their domain as it does not reflect their proclaimed vision, Minister for Information and Broadcasting and National Heritage Senator Pervaiz Rashid has said.

In a statement on Sunday, he said that the figures had been tampered with and fudged to cover a Rs41 billion shortfall in the budget to make it appear as a balanced budget.The minister said that 71 percent of the total budget would be spent on salaries, leaving merely 29 percent for development that was very little for development in the province.

The PTI should have curtailed its administrative and non-development expenditure to spend the money on the welfare of the common people, Senator Pervaiz Rashid suggested. He said that another contradiction of the PTI appeared by accepting foreign aid from USAID, Britain and Germany against their claims of not going to the United States and their actions of staging protests and road blockades against US/Nato.

“It is not a tax-free budget as tax has been imposed on professionals and other categories,” he added.“So where is the relief for the common man? For the first time in the history of Pakistan, property tax has been extended to the rural areas and villages in this budget of KP,” he said.

“Is this the ‘Naya Pakistan’ vision of the PTI leadership?” The minister questioned.He said that KP had spent only 50 percent of its current budget and the remaining amount was re-appropriated in June in the last month of the financial year to the district of KP chief minister, Nowshera, the district of the Speaker, Swabi, and the district of the finance minister, Dir, which was against the slogans of fairness and transparency of the PTI.

Senator Pervaiz Rashid said that the PTI criticised the PML-N for the Metro Bus Project, terming the Rs40 billion project a ‘Jangla Bus’, but the KP government was planning to spend Rs230 billion on it for a small city like Peshawar. “Is it not a mega scandal in the making?” He asked.

“Where are the claims of Imran Khan to turn every hospital in KP into Shaukat Khanam? Why has the Chamber of Commerce in Peshawar placed on its building a huge banner stating, Save Peshawar? Why are traders, industrialists, doctors and others leaving Peshawar?”

The senator asked many questions from the PTI: why have the salaries of the chief minister, cabinet ministers and others been doubled with 100 percent increase including house rent which was Rs70,000 as compared to the salaries of the government employees which had been increased only by 10 percent?

Why did the PTI government waste most of the financial year as the first development project was initiated in February 2014? “A token amount of Rs200 million had been earmarked for the Urban Transport System, what happened to the Nano Train of Imran Khan? I hope Imran Khan will come up with answers of these questions in his next public gathering,” Parvaiz Rashid said.