Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) received Rs800 billion under a one per cent share set aside for the province in the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award. He said he was told during a visit to Peshawar that 5,000 police posts in the province were vacant.
Speaking to the KP parliamentary party, the prime minister said the money should have strengthened the province’s ability to fight terrorism. His remarks covered security, the economy, the federal government’s recent decisions in the province and alleged corruption under the previous provincial administration.
Shehbaz says NFC funds should have bolstered KP police
Shehbaz said the amount KP had received was substantial and that it should have been used to equip the province’s police. “Rs800 billion is a far cry; had even Rs80 billion been spent in those years, the police in KP would have been armed to fight terrorism and very well trained. But unfortunately, that did not happen,” he said.
He said the one per cent share had been agreed by the chief ministers of all four provinces in Lahore in 2010, when Yousuf Raza Gilani was prime minister, and was signed in Gwadar. Under the arrangement, one per cent of the provinces’ resources would go to KP before the rest was distributed. “I accepted this proposal gladly on the orders of my leader Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, and the other provinces accepted it too,” he said.
Shehbaz questioned what the province had done with the money. “How many safe cities were built there, as I built in Lahore? How much was the Counter-Terrorism Department strengthened?” he asked. He repeated that when he visited Peshawar, he had been told about the 5,000 vacant police posts.
Terrorism sacrifices and claims of renewed militancy
Shehbaz said terrorism had been completely ended in Pakistan in 2017-18, and that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had borne the heaviest burden. He said mothers, sisters, youth and children in the province had made the greatest sacrifices during that period. He also said politicians’ families had paid a price, pointing to Samar Bilour, who attended the event, and recalling that a brother of Haji Ghulam Ahmad Bilour had been killed and that Amir Muqam had also been targeted.
The prime minister listed the costs of the conflict as he described them. “The Pakistani economy took a severe blow, 80,000 people were martyred, and economic losses of $150 to 200 billion were suffered. Only then was terrorism completely ended in Pakistan in 2017-18,” he said. He credited that outcome to the period of Nawaz Sharif’s government, saying the army, police, people of KP and ordinary citizens had together ended terrorism.
Shehbaz also referred to the Army Public School attack in Peshawar, saying the killing of children and teachers would remain a heartrending event in the pages of history. “Little flowers had not even blossomed when they were mutilated,” he said. He added that terrorism had returned in recent years, citing events in 2019 and 2020 and saying militants had been brought to Swat from Afghanistan. He said thousands more civilians, police and army personnel had been killed in the past two and a half years, and that an incident of terrorism took place somewhere every day.
According to Shehbaz, he had offered joint action against the threat. “We told them, brother, come with us, come together, and we will confront them as we did in the past,” he said.
Sit-ins, governor’s rule and the economy
Shehbaz said the past two and a half years had seen long marches and sit-ins. He recalled the PTI’s 2014 sit-in at D-Chowk, where, he said, protesters “at times dug graves, at times hung clothes”. He said efforts to persuade them to leave ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping had failed, and that the visit was postponed. He said Xi arrived in April 2015, agreements were signed, and 20-hour loadshedding then came to an end.
On the economy, Shehbaz said the political and military leadership had worked day and night to put it back on its feet, though the journey had been long. He said a war in the Gulf had pushed oil and petrol prices sharply higher, but that petrol and diesel were still reaching people, “though very expensive”. He said a subsidy programme introduced in February had been brought back, and that around 13 million people had benefited from it. The government had set aside Rs75 billion for the scheme, he added.
He also warned against reversing recent gains. “God forbid, in 2023 there was a very big threat that we would default. We would go back into that,” he said, adding that “they did not listen to us.”
Explaining the imposition of governor’s rule and emergency in the province, Shehbaz said a committee of the PPP and PML-N had held talks lasting 48 hours. He said he had been told a draft was final and was being shown to Afridi, with approval expected within minutes, but that approval had not come. “We were then forced to think of governor’s rule and emergency,” he said. The federal government had suspended the PTI-led provincial government on October 11 and detained Chief Minister Sohail Afridi, accusing the administration of failing to tackle militancy. The PTI has rejected those allegations and called the move a pretext to crush protests.
Corruption claims and calls for quick development projects
On corruption, Shehbaz said he believed most people from Peshawar to Kohistan, Hazara and the southern districts would say public service works had been almost non-existent. He said people in the province had been deprived of medicine, treatment and education for 13 years. He added that the metro built in Peshawar was a good thing, but that corruption had taken place in it.
He urged that the focus shift to short-term measures that could be delivered within months rather than long-term projects. Repairing a school wall, getting teachers to attend and ensuring medicine reached hospitals would earn people’s prayers, he said. He noted that Danish schools had already been announced for Chitral, Haripur, Mansehra, Bajaur and Shangla, and said he could announce three or four more this year. “The Danish school is something that goes even beyond Aitchison College Lahore,” he said.
