PESHAWAR: Pakistan Peoples Party leader Rahimdad Khan on Tuesday urged the government to fully implement the 18th Constitutional Amendment and provide provinces with the due share in national resources to remove their sense of deprivation.

Mr Rahimdad, a member of the PPP’s Central Executive Committee, told a presser at the Peshawar Press Club that the federal government had failed to fulfil its prime responsibilities of alleviating poverty and addressing economic crisis, so inflation and joblessness were on the rise.

He said his party had got the 18th Constitutional Amendment passed by parliament but the provinces had yet to get due share in national resources.

The PPP leader said the PTI had formed the provincial government for the second consecutive time but it hadn’t executed any mega project for people’s development in the last one year.

He said the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit project was initiated by the last PTI government with the promise of completion in six months but it was still incomplete due to poor planning.

Mr Rahimdad said slow pace of work on the BRT project had made the people’s life miserable. Referring to reports about heaps of garbage across Karachi, he said all major cities in our country were facing such problems but media was least interested to highlight these issues properly.

The PPP leader said the government should focus its attention on the solution of the people’s problems instead of creating a constitutional crisis especially when the country faced multiple issues on both internal and external fronts.

He said the local bodies, which had completed their four-year tenure lately, were denied due funds by the PTI government and thus, preventing them from playing an effective role for the province’s development.

Mr Rahimdad suggested that the centre provide funds to the provinces in line with the constitutional provisions and monitor development work to check corruption.

He said victimisation of the opposition by the ruling PTI and its tall claims about ‘change’ in people’s life won’t resolve national issues.

The PPP leader announced support for JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s anti-government ‘long march’ on Islamabad and said it was time all political parties join hands to oust ‘incompetent’ rulers, which have failed to deliver the goods.

“We are morally bound to extend support to the JUI-F’s long march,” he said.

Mr Rahimdad criticised the government’s Kashmir policy and said cosmetic steps won’t counter the illegal annexation of the occupied Kashmir by India and violence against the innocent residents by occupation forces.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2019