KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has urged the federal and the Balochistan governments to take urgent steps to remove the sense of deprivation in the province and provide basic needs to its people.

The PPP chief said this while talking to the PPP ticket-holder from Gwadar, Ijaz Baloch, who called on him at Bilawal House.

Mr Baloch informed him that the people of Gwadar had been facing a severe drinking water crisis for three months and authorities remained unmoved despite strong protests and demonstrations by the local people.

He said Sui gas plants had been installed in Gwadar, but the gas was provided to only a few selected localities while the poor and the fishing communities were deprived of gas.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari said that such injustices and discrimination in the provision of civic amenities in Gwadar were intolerable and his party would not remain silent on such acts.

He said that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had ordered the construction of the Akra Kaur Dam near Gwadar in 1988 and completed the same in her second tenure in 1995 to provide water to the people of Gwadar.

The PPP chairman asked the federal and the Balochistan governments to pay attention to the water shortage in Gwadar to avoid any human tragedy there and added that following the 18th amendment to the Cons­titution, the local people were made owners of their resources.

He assured Ijaz Baloch that he would meet the PPP workers from Balochistan and look into its organisation.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2015

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