PESHAWAR: The Pakhtunkhwa Ulasi Tehreek, a civil society organisation, on Monday demanded of the ruling PTI’s leadership to replace the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister alleging that Pervez Khattak has misled the local residents about the province’s share in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project causing irreparable loss to the province in the distribution of national resources.

Pakhtunkhwa Ulasi Tehreek chairman Dr Said Alam Mehsud told a news conference at the Peshawar Press Club that his organisation had begun telling the people long ago that KP was being completely neglected in the CPEC project, but the CM falsely claimed to have got a major share for the province in the multibillion dollars initiative.

He said the CM had repeatedly claimed after attending the sixth meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee that many schemes had been secured for the province under the CPEC project but all those claims later turned out to be false.

Accompanied by Ajmal Afridi, Dr Rohila, Liaqat Yousafzai and others, Dr Mehsud asked the chief minister to tender resignation for misleading the people of KP and Fata on the matter.

He said if the CM was not willing to step down, then all political parties and member of provincial assembly would hold him accountable for telling lies and violating the unanimous resolutions adopted by the KP Assembly for due share in nine sectors including motorways, power, fiber optic cable, railways, new plan for power generation, replacement of electric system, LNG, trade centres, industrial zones, oil and gas pipelines and entire projects went to other provinces.

The Pakhtunkhwa Ulasi Tehreek chief said it was astonishing that CM Pervez Khattak was making tall claims to have achieved the due rights of the province under the CPEC project but there was no reality in his assertions. He said the CM had achieved nothing during the last JCC meeting, which was the biggest failure of the government on the CPEC issue.

Dr Mehsud urged political parties, civil society organisations and people to start an organised protest movement to protect KP’s due share in the CPEC and warned if that didn’t happen, the issues of Pakhtuns would worsen.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2017