04 June 2004	Friday	15 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

LAHORE, June 3: Pakistan's future is at stake in Balochistan, which has remained neglected since independence. Balochistan Governor Muhammad Awais Ghani stated this at a meeting of the Quaid-i-Azam Forum held at the Aiwan-i-Karkunan-i-Tehrik-i-Pakistan auditorium on Thursday to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the day when partition plan of the subcontinent was announced on June 3, 1947.

The meeting also launched the forum's secretary Dr M.A Soofi's book 'Do Khan, Aik Pakistan' concerning the role of the NWFP in the Pakistan movement. Mr Justice Nasim Hasan Shah (retired) was in the chair.

The governor said that time had come to compensate Balochistan for the deprivations and injustices of the past done by the successive rulers of Pakistan to that province and its people.

Virtually, he said, Pakistan had not reached Balochistan and no change whatsoever had been brought about there. He said that he was not expressing his views as a governor of that province, the office to which he was appointed a few months ago, but it was his observation as a citizen of Pakistan.

He said the people and the government must give a serious thought to the development of the province. He recalled what the late Ghulam Farooq, the first PIDC chairman, used to say that his first priority was the development of Karachi, then Punjab and afterwards other provinces.

The governor criticized the prevailing education system which, he said, was the main reason for country's various socio-economic and political problems. He said that two systems of education, the legacy of the British, one for the elite and the other for the poor people, had created a gulf of interests between the two classes.

The British had introduced the duality in education to create a class of bureaucrats to serve their own vested interests and control the people. By continuing the class system in education the elite class was consuming 80 per cent of the national resources, leaving only 20 per cent for the rest.

That was the reason the poverty was on the rise and the rich was getting richer. He said there was a vast difference in the political thinking of the two classes.

One could see this gulf widening with the palatial bungalows and plazas on the one hand and as slums, huts and poor men's houses on the other. He said the government must take steps to put an end to the class system and unify the education.

The governor said the ideology of Pakistan was in great danger and all-out efforts should be made to guard it as on its preservation and dissemination depended its existence.

Dr Nasim Hassan Shah said that while referendum was held in the NWFP in which an overwhelming majority of the people voted for Pakistan, Balochistan jirga decided for Pakistan, the provincial assemblies of the Punjab and Sindh had passed resolutions for Pakistan.