PESHAWAR, Dec 31: The NWFP assembly continued its debate on the rising unemployment, price-hike and shortage of civic and health amenities in remote areas and termed it a result of the ill-planned economic policies of the successive governments.

The session, presided over by speaker Bakht Jahan Khan, started here at the provincial assembly hall on Tuesday.

Abdul Akbar Khan of the People’s Party attributed the prevailing growing unemployment and price-hike to the economic agenda of the military regime led by Gen Pervez Musharraf, which, according to him, had squeezed the general public and amassed dollars to please the IMF.

He was of the view that the present Jamali-led government was an expansion of the military regime. Instead of transferring power, the military rulers had shared it with the turncoats.

The Jamali government had announced that it would continue the economic policies of the military regime, which, according to him, had left the people with no choice but to commit suicide.

If the Jamali government continued with the old agenda, how change for the better could be brought about, he queried. Every federal minister was harping on the same tune, he added.

Thousands of people had been sent home in the name of down- and right-sizing, ban had not been lifted on fresh recruitments, and government was reluctant to appoint a new finance minister, he told the house.

He claimed the government had levied taxes of the value of Rs150 billion (per year) during the last three years but didn’t spend a single penny on the socio-economic development. Instead, it had purchased dollars from this tax money, to meet the conditionalities on re-scheduling of loans, he added.

Earlier, he asked the government to seek a fresh determination of its share in the divisible pool on the basis of latest census of 1998, which was 14 per cent of the National Finance Commission.

The federal government, he said, used to pay the NWFP 12.95 per cent on the basis of 1987 census, which was unjust, he added.

The NWFP, he said, had been incurring a loss of over two billion rupees per year since 1998.

Rifat Akbar Swati of the PPP (Sherpao) said ad-hocism had been the root cause of unemployment, abject poverty and price-hike in Pakistan, and particularly in the province.

“We have never been consistent in our long-term national policies. We are victims of nepotism, favouritism and corruption,” she added.

The drug mafia, gun-runners and smugglers were self-employed sections of society as they could not be called unemployed. The educated youth, which multiplied the unemployed youth every year, thought that merit held no place in Pakistan, she added.

She asked the government to lift ban on recruitments and form a house committee which should monitor the new appointments. “It is right, we are short of revenues and cannot provide job to everybody, but we can provide them loan to do their own business,” she said.

She asked the government to change banking rules, if it wanted to promote self-employment in the country. The mark-up phenomenon introduced by the banks had been the main cause behind emergence of the sick industries, she added.

Shahraz Khan, Ghzala Habib, Nasreen Khattak and Imtiaz Bukhari also took part in the debate on the pressing issue and urged the government to do away with the class-based economic policies and reduce the gap between the haves and haves-not.

Anwar Kamal Khan of the PML-N urged the government to review its community-based tube-well policy, which had been a burden to the national exchequer. He asked the government to re-introduce water-tank schemes in rural areas in the larger interest of the village population.

The house also decided that female students would be exempted from pasting photographs on examination forms by next year.

The house also adopted a resolution against the emergence of a new religion in Punjab and asked the Punjab government to take action against the exponent of this religion under section 295-C.