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QUETTA, Oct 20: Central leader of the National Party Sardar Sanaullah Khan Zehri has said that he will not abandon his struggle for the rights of the people of Balochistan despite the character assassination campaign launched by the government against him.
Talking to Dawn on telephone from Karachi, the former home minister alleged that the government was trying to implicate him in false corruption cases.
When asked to comment on a report published in a section of the press that NAB had summoned him to clarify alleged cases of malpractice during his tenure as the minister of local government in 1990, he said all such reports were part of the government propaganda to force him quit his struggle against the construction of the Gwadar port.
Sardar Zehri maintained that mud-slinging or filing false cases would not deter him from opposing the anti-people mega projects that were not acceptable to the local people.
The National Party leader alleged that the government was using NAB as a tool to implicate its opponents in false cases to make them support government policies and added that some of the people wanted by NAB in corruption cases had been made ministers.
He said it was strange that when he was the home minister in the Jam cabinet he was clean but when he resigned and launched an anti-Gwadar port campaign two months ago his record as a minister in the 1990 had been investigated.
He said this step of the government was tantamount to black-mailing of politicians, adding that the government would not succeed in stopping him from opposing the Gwadar port project.
Sardar Zehri said his character assassination by the agencies did not embarrass him as the Baloch people knew the reality, adding that struggle against the construction of Gwadar port and exploration of resources without the consent of the local people would continue.
PROTEST RALLY: Hundreds of members of the Balochistan Labour Federation (BLF) staged a protest demonstration in the district government premises here on Monday against the recruitments in various departments without accommodating the surplus employees and work charge labourers.
Addressing the demonstrators, BLF President Khan Zaman announced that a protest public meeting would be held on Saturday to adopt a future line of action as the government was not interested in resolving the demands presented to the concerned quarters.
He condemned the local administration for not allowing the workers to stage a demonstration in front of the Balochistan Assembly Secretariat to register a protest to the Speaker against the recruitments which affected the interests of the employees declared surplus.
He claimed that 400 persons were appointed in the public health engineering department, Water and Sanitation Authority (Wasa) and irrigation department, and added that recruitments were made in violation of the rules and regulations and smacked of nepotism.
The BLF president pointed out that 335 employees were kept on surplus basis, and said instead of new appointments the surplus employees should have been adjusted.
Similarly, he further said, 900 work charge employees also needed to be regularized.
