KOHAT: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf has claimed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during his recent visit to Kohat announced the same projects which were made part of the western route of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project on the protest of the provincial government last year.

These projects were taken up by the parliamentary parties in 2015 at an all-party conference and included in the CPEC after their struggle of six months.

“Former senator Abbas Khan Afridi is cheating the people of Kohat and of KP by telling lies,” alleged MPA Ziaullah Bangash while talking to this correspondent on Sunday.

On Saturday, Mr Afridi had told a meeting at his hujra here that the prime minister had approved Rs100 billion projects for Kohat. He had also waved the copy of the letter at the gathering describing details of the sanctioned projects.

Mr Bangash claimed that the prime minister had announced the same projects during his last visit to Bannu. He said that a deal had been finalised between the PTI’s provincial government and the World Bank for the establishment of a Women’s University in Kohat.

He alleged that the prime minister was showering billions of rupees everywhere for political mileage to wipe out the stains of Panama Leaks. He said that the PM would also try to get the train service to Kohat resumed.

Mr Bangash claimed that the prime minister was doing all this to make the people think that the provincial government had failed to deliver.

He said that a train which could travel up to Jand in Punjab, a border town just 40 kilometres from here, had been stopped. They said that a goods train had been plying the track taking sleepers from the factory in Kohat to Rawalpindi, but only two bogies of passengers were abandoned in 2013.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2016