GILGIT: Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said here on Thursday that the incumbent government during the past two years not only ignored the people of Gilgit-Baltistan but also the entire country.

Addressing PPP workers convention in Saksa area of Ganche district, he said the federal government wanted to destroy Sindh as it had done with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. He said only democracy could resolve problems of the people.

The PPP leader has launched campaign for the upcoming elections from the district.

“PPP is still fighting for real democracy and against the hybrid system from the platform of Pakistan Democratic Movement,” he said. He said that Gilgit-Baltistan lacked universities and hospitals because people sitting in Islamabad refused to listen to demands of the people.

He said the region was feeling pressure due to Covid-19 because it did not have a single tertiary medical facility. He added that if voted to power, PPP would establish hospitals in the region.

“We will have to make sure that education up to university level is available to everyone.

We will establish universities and campuses all over Gilgit-Baltistan so that the local youth can get education,” said the PP leader.

Fruit processing plants and cold storages would be established in Gilgit-Baltistan to facilitate local growers, he said and criticised the government for what he called ignoring the growers of the country.

He said Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto provided passport to the people so that they could go abroad for employment to support their families. He added that Shaheed Benazir Bhutto visited Siachen despite being a woman.

The local elders, PPP workers including Mohammad Jafar, Ghulam Ali Haidari, Mohammad Ibrahim, Raja Liaquat, Yahya Bakhtiar, Engineer Mohammad Nazir and Ghulam Abbas participated in the convention.

The PPP leader was accompanied by Qamar Zaman Kaira, Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar and Syed Nasir Shah.

Bilawal Bhutto said that PPP had established a network of hospitals in Sindh where heart and liver patients were treated free of cost.

He added that famous singer from Punjab Shaukat Ali was treated in a hospital in Gumbat, a small tehsil of Khairpur district in Sindh, free of cost.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2020