QUETTA: Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan said on Wednesday that CM’s Inception Team had identified over 600 development schemes which were found only on papers and did not exist anywhere in the province.

Speaking at a ceremony organised by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Balochistan, to hand over looted money recovered by NAB from corrupt government officials, the chief minister said that these development schemes had been prepared by the previous government.

The Director General of NAB, Balochistan, Muhammad Abid Javed, handed over a cheque for Rs600 million to the chief minister, recovered by NAB from different corrupt government officials.

The chief minister said the present government had already announced zero tolerance for corruption and corrupt elements.

“The future of millions of people of Balochistan is linked with our policies,” he said, adding that lack of sincerity in rooting out corruption by previous governments had multiplied problems of the masses and retarded the development of the province.

“There should be no further space for corruption in the province,” Mr Khan said.

“Our religion teaches us self-accountability and zero tolerance for corruption and without following teachings of our holy religion against corruption, we will continue to sink into the sludge of corruption which is the root cause of all evils the country and the province are facing at present,” he said.

Referring to financial crisis the Balochistan government was now facing, Mr Khan said that pensioners’ bill of the provincial government had gone up to Rs21 billion while the total revenue of the province was Rs15bn.

He said the Balochistan government needed $3bn to steer the province out of the financial woes.

He stressed the need for utilising existing resources and regretted that despite having precious mineral, oil, gas and other natural resources, leaders of the country had been forced to visit other countries to seek loans and that was very embarrassing situation for the entire country”.

Speaking on the occasion, NAB’s DG of Balochistan Muhammad Abid Javed held out an assurance to the provincial government that the bureau would not repeat the practice of sending letters to halt development funds of lawmakers and vowed to continue its efforts to recover government’s looted money from corrupt elements and deposit it in the government’s exchequer.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2018