PESHAWAR: Mohammad Yaqoob Sheikh, the MNA-elect from Dera Ismail Khan, has said that he will provide jobs to 4,000 people in his private complex of industries to overcome unemployment in the area.

Addressing a news conference at Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday, he said that he would provide drinking water to his voters. He appreciated the people of the area for preferring him to JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman in the July 25 elections.

“I also remained part of JUI-F for about eight years. I know that people always supported the JUI-F chief but he never bothered to pay a single visit to his voters and thus the voters brought a change by rejecting him,” he said.

Yaqoob Sheikh says PTI govt to resolve longstanding issues of people in DI Khan

Mr Sheikh said that people buried feudal politics forever in Dera Ismail Khan. He claimed that the PTI government would take practical measures to resolve issues of people in the hitherto neglected district.

Referring to the complaints about rigging in the polls, he said that if the JUI-F chief contested the elections for 10 times, he would lose it with a big margin. He said that the people, who were talking about rigging, did not have any proof regarding it.

The MNA-elect said that defeating such senior politicians was not easy but they lost the elections due to reaction of people because the traditional politicians never took problems of people serious and just enjoyed the perks and privileges.

He said that the victory of PTI in the general elections proved that people wanted to bring positive change in their fate by seeking reasonable solution to their longstanding issues.

Mr Sheikh said that he would make all kinds of efforts to ensure provision of clean drinking water to people, control unemployment and change 380,000 acres of barren land into agricultural farms in Dera Ismail Khan besides constructing roads and resolving issue of power outages within one year.

He said that NA-39 constituency was consisted of rural localities where people were drinking contaminated water but the JUI-F chief never bothered to provide them with clean drinking water.

He said that he would recruit 1,000 people in his industrial complex while thousands of others would get indirect jobs to earn their livelihood honourably.

“I have invited some well-off people to join hands with me, invest in the area and help the poor people,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2018