ISLAMABAD: Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Khalid Khurshid slammed the federal government for reducing the region’s budget by 50 percent.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad alongside PTI leaders Murad Saeed and Ali Amin Gandapur, he said Gilgit Baltistan is the gateway to CPEC but the incumbent government has reduced the budget to Rs23 billion “under an agenda to push the region backward”.
He said the development budget was supposed to be increased by 45 percent but the incumbent government has stalled the journey of development.
CM Khalid Khurshid further said that GB’s allocations had reached billions of rupees for the first time during Imran Khan’s government, Previously, the PSDP s portfolio was Rs2bn which Imran raised to Rs10bn, he added.
The PTI-led federal government had given his government Rs32bn under the recurrent head and another Rs15bn was also added to it as an additional grant, taking the total to Rs47bn.
He said the PTI government made an announcement of a development package which was set at Rs18bn in the first stage and our average was to be Rs55bn annually.
Rebuking the current government, he said the budget “deliberately” curtailed the development portfolio of GB by 50 percent.
He said Imran Khan had for the first time allocated Rs400bn to make Gilgit a hotspot for tourists. He alleged the package had now been sabotaged and projects in an advanced planning phase had been shelved.
He said GB was also facing extreme power shortages and the government could only provide electricity for two hours daily to Skardu. “The entire country is getting electricity, except our region, because we are not part of the national grid,” he said.
He said GB was catering to 70 percent of the water needs of the entire country, adding that Imran Khan had given a power project of 200 megawatts to GB for the first time.
He tsaid not a single recruitment had taken place in police since 2005 despite the region being a sensitive area. He said the price of wheat had increased in the local market and GB might face a shortfall of 0.4 million wheat sacks.
The chief minister said similar treatment was meted out to Azad Kashmir as well. This “imported government” is on a mission to undo all development initiatives of the past, he claimed.
