RAHIM YAR KHAN: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has accused the Punjab government of spending the entire budget of the province on one city.

He was addressing a public meeting in Jamal Dinwali, some 40km from here, on Saturday.

He said that south Punjab was being deprived of its due share in the provincial budget and claimed that funds for 40 million people of this part of the province were less than the funds to be spent on the Orange Line Train project.

The PPP chairman said the Punjab government was taking loans of billions of rupees for the Orange Line project.

Though the project was not beneficial for the people in south Punjab, they would have to pay for it, he added.

He said there was a shortage of water for thousands of acres of agriculture land in south Punjab but the provincial government had no budget for solving this problem.

The PML-N government which had been ruling the province for eight years had announced Rs15 billion projects for south Punjab, but funds were never released, he regretted.

Bilawal Bhutto said the people of south Punjab were being punished because of their love for the PPP.

He said the ‘Takht-i-Lahore’ was afraid of accountability, but PPP would take to task those who had plundered the public money and deprived people of their rights.

The PPP chairman said there had been decrease in the country’s exports because of the wrong policies of the PML-N government. Farmers are becoming bankrupt and they have no other option but to sell their land to solve their financial problems.

The Kissan package of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was not for farmers, but for the corrupt officials, he added.

He said that during its tenure at the centre the PPP government had given funds for the wheat support programme and development projects in south Punjab. The party had always picked people for important positions from this part of the province, he added.

Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said that people of south Punjab should struggle for their separate province.

He said during its tenure the PPP government had given many mega projects to the country, including Gwadar, Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline and Diamer-Bhasha dam.

Makhdoom Sayyed Ahmed Mahmood criticised the PML-N government and said it had failed in solving people’s problems.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2016