September 30, 2006	Saturday	Ramazan 6, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Sept 29: People’s Party Parliamentarians leader Wazir Baig has called for a probe into ‘corruption and mismanagement’ in the Sust Dry Port affairs.

In a statement issued here on Friday, the former member of the Northern Areas Legislative Council (Nalc) alleged that Deputy Chief Executive Ghazanfar and his family members had turned “the Sust Dry Port Trust into a family affair” and put in danger the local people’s investment in trade with China.

He asked the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) and Northern Areas’ Registrar of Joint Stock Companies to audit the accounts of the Sust Dry Port Trust. He also demanded of the government to investigate Mr Ghazanfar’s alleged misuse of powers and persecution of his opponents.

Mr Baig accused the deputy chief executive and his wife, who is also a member of the Nalc, of misusing public funds to arrange cultural festivities “to entertain civil and military bureaucracy”.

“The self-styled ‘Mir of Hunza’ is virtually treating the local bureaucracy as his personal servants and intimidating the honest and upright officers,” alleged Mr Baig who contested the Nalc polls against the PML candidate from Hunza.

Mr Ghazanfar was “trying to create a state within the state and revive the old despotic rule in the most popular tourist destination valley which is not possible in the 21st century,” he said.

He claimed that the deputy chief executive did not initiate a single new project in Hunza during the last two years.

“Only those projects that were started during my tenure have got completed and some are in progress. But Mr Ghazanfar wants to take credit for them,” he said.

He listed projects such as upgrading of Karimabad Girls College to degree level, construction of Ganish-Karimabad truck road and widening of Sust-Chupursan road, installation of power plants in Misgar and Chupursan, construction of two primary schools and a dispensary in Chupursan, completion of Shimshal jeep road, a 30-bed hospital in Aliabad and a 10-bed hospital in Gulmit, the Agriculture Transfer of Technology project at Murtazabad, grain godown at Hasanabad and many other small projects. The government was doing nothing except taking privileges, he said.