DADU, May 16: Johi Union Council Nazim Mohammad Usman Jamali has said that the BHP oil and gas company is spending only one per cent of its profit on the social sector. He was speaking at a seminar on "Multinational Oil and Gas Companies and Community Development Projects in Dadu" by an NGO, Speech, hereon Saturday.

He said that he had tried to contact officials of the company for providing health, education and clean drinking water facilities and undertaking other development schemes in the area but they had refused to meet him.

Bahawalpur Union Council Naib Nazim Shamsuddin Panhwar complained that the community development department of the BHP company was releasing funds to some NGOs on share basis.

He said that the company had not provided jobs to people of his union council. Mr Panhwar said that the BHP company working in the Johi taluka and the ENI group working in the Sehwan taluka had failed to provide facilities to local people according to their agreements with the Sindh government.

District People's Hari Committee president Mohammad Hassan Chandio said that BHP officials were not ready to meet local people and they were appointing people from other provinces in skilled and unskilled jobs.

He warned that a drive would be launched against the multinational companies and supply of material to their camps would be stopped if legal rights of the area people were not accepted.

He alleged that MPAs, MNAs and the district administration were supporting officials of the companies as they were receiving their share of money. Khamiso Khan, a resident of the Khan Mohammad Gadhi village, complained that the BHP company had obtained his land on lease for three years but when the contract period expired, the company officials neither paid him money for the extended period nor returned him the land.

He said that a plant was being constructed on his land. Other speakers demanded that multinational oil and gas companies working in the Kachho area of Dadu district should launch projects to provide basic facilities to area people.

They said that oil and gas companies should provide facilities like health, supply of drinking water, education and employment to local people. Hina Shaheen of the South Asia Partnership said that the companies should initiate projects for development of the area as they were extracting huge quantity of gas from it.