ISLAMABAD, Sept 12: Balochistan National Party MNA Abdur Rauf Mengal has said the federal government owes about $1 billion to Balochistan as royalty on natural gas alone.

“This is Balochistan’s money; extracted from our natural resources at Sui; and this must be paid to the people of the province,” Mr Mengal said in a chat with Dawn at the National Assembly on Friday.

A journalist by profession, who was elected to the National Assembly from Khuzdar (NA-269), Mr Mengal said not only Sui in Dera Bugti, the federal government was also drawing oil from Kohlu and oil and gas from Jhalawan without an express permission from the people of the province.

“The government thinks Balochistan’s natural resources are its seigniory and it can occupy whatever it wishes. If the government so thinks, it is mistaken; all the natural resources of a province belong to the people of that province and it can benefit from these resources only after their (the people’s) permission,” Mr Mengal said.

The BNP legislator said the people of the province rejected even the development projects, which undermined their interests. In this regard, he referred to the development of Gwadar port which, he said, was an unjust scheme repudiating the just claims of the people of the area. The project, he said, did not promise a fair play to the people and thus of no use.

Mr Mengal said no one could oppose any development project if it took care of the needs and safeguarded interests of the people. But Gwadar, he said, was a classical example of how the local people were being ignored and people from other parts of the country were being settled there.

He gave the example of landed property in Gwadar, which was sold mainly to the people from other provinces and said the time was not far away when Balochis would be reduced to an ethnic nullity in their own land.

He said all the political parties of the province had in a 29-point charter of demands asked the government to ensure that the rights of the people of Balochistan were safeguarded.

The charter. he said, was presented to the federal and the provincial governments after soliciting the support of the PONM and other nationalists parties of the province. “But (the government has not yet responded to our demands,” he said.