Need to check MPAs’ funds

By Siddiq Baluch

Since Balochistan gained provincial status, it is a nightmare for the independent economists finding a single point in support of the MPAs’ schemes in any part of Balochistan.

The former military dictator late General Ziaul Haq did the great disservice to the people and the country by commercializing politics and democracy providing an incentive of MNA/Senator schemes for development. At that time, the Members of the Parliament or the Provincial Assembly used to spend a meagre amount of money on their elections as there was no charm to make huge investment for getting elected to the Assemblies.

Junejo Government, on the advice of the security establishment and the military dictator, initiated the MNA or Senator schemes for development allocating a substantial amount in every budget annually. It was the turning point when the people considered election as a trade and started to make some investment, get elected and earn much more along with unlimited privileges. Thus, the leaders virtually monopolized their constituencies making substantial investment to retain their seat even to dislodge the established political parties with mass base. In other words, Ziaul Haq made an attempt to dislodge the PPP and institutionalize corruption by offering bribe to the Senators, MNAs and MPAs in shape of development schemes or allocation of huge amount in every budget.

Now the MPAs’ schemes are part of the major leakage of public money as they are being wasted on insignificant schemes. One of the sitting ministers in Balochistan from a religious party is investing billions of rupees from the public money on his constituency. Otherwise, there are zero economic benefits from those individual and personal schemes of the minister. According to an unofficial estimate, every MPA is getting more than Rs 140 million as his personal share from the public money this year and in the name of MPA development scheme. It is a huge amount of money and it is not justified on any account.

The entire public money is going wasted on insignificant schemes leaving no impact on the quality of life or on the economy of this backward province. Interestingly, one of the MPAs made a demanded that the amount of MPA scheme should be raised from Rs 140 million to 400 millions a year. There was hue and cry when former Chief Minister, late Nawab Mohammad Akbar Bugti, announced to audit the spending on MPA schemes and appointed a team of very honest officials, including the present Chief Secretary, to ascertain that the money was rightly spent by the MPA or not. The decision shook the whole country and pressure was mounted on Nawab Sahib to stop this investigation or file the documents for every.

Later, no attempt was made to audit the MPA schemes. The future government of Balochistan reserves the right to hold inquiry into all the MPA schemes from 1985 to this date in order to ascertain whether or not the public money was rightly spent. Secondly, we have been proposing that the government should stop allocating such a big amount of money on the MPA schemes. The funds of individual MPAs should be grouped and invested on mega project that should guarantee a qualitative change in the economic life of the people of Balochistan. Huge power houses, hundreds of major dams, water storage facilities, construction of highway of international standard, completion of Gwadar deep sea port along with its basic infrastructure and a decent economic infrastructure for future generations, better educational institutions and quality health services with the public money.

The government of Balochistan should start long-term planning, doing away with the annual plan which are being changed on weekly basis and at the whims of the ministers and MPAs, if not officials. There will be no development planning when the plans are changed on weekly basis. If the government is interested to weed out poverty, combat backwardness, then it will have to adopt long-term plans—twenty-year plans, ten-year Plans, five-year plans barring the ministers and individual MPAs in bringing changes in those longterm plans.

It is an irony of fate that Balochistan, being the most backward province of Pakistan, had never tried to get benefits from the long-term plans to combat backwardness. The Pakistani establishment encouraged and patronized ad hocism in development planning in order to retain an acceptable level of poverty and backwardness.

(The write is a veteran Quetta-based journalist with five-decade journalistic experience of covering Balochistan. He is currently the editor-in-chief of Daily Balochistan Express and Daily Azadi (Urdu), Quetta: dailyazadi@gmail.com. To read previous articles by the same writer, click here)