February 10, 2003	Monday	Zul Hijjah 8,1423

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MUZAFFARABAD, Feb 9: A former minister and AJK People’s Party leader, Khawaja Farooq Ahmed, has termed the tour of Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali to Azad Kashmir “disappointing” and said the state government had failed to do homework in this regard.

“The expectations which the people of Azad Kashmir had from the tour of the prime minister did not come true and it was due to incompetence and indifference of the AJK government, which could not do proper homework to make the visit beneficial for them,” he said in a statement.

Zafarullah Jamali visited the AJK capital on Feb 5 to mark the Kashmir Solidarity Day, but there was no official word about approval of any special grant or project for the territory, as had been the tradition.

The AJKPP leader was of the view that there was no use of spending millions of rupees for a ritual speech of the prime minister, which could have been issued to the press from Islamabad.

He said the AJK government was supposed to prepare a summary on the needs of the state and the pending issues, like raise in the AJK quota in medical colleges, rehabilitation of the Indian firing victims, provision of Sui gas to Muzaffarabad and a just decision on power tariff.

Prime Minister Jamali should also have been taken to a refugee camp to send a good message across the Line of Control, like President Gen Pervez Musharraf had done in 2000 and 2001 on the recommendation of the then AJK government, he said.

He lamented that the Muslim Conference government had failed to fully utilize the tour not only on the Kashmir front but also for development.

Khwaja Farooq demanded that the premier should provide liberal aid to meet the demands of the people of Azad Kashmir, specially provision of Sui gas to the AJK capital.