Taj Haider asks CEC to unfreeze funds for uplift projects

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) called upon Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja to unfreeze all development funds for the ongoing development schemes.

“Legality or illegality aside, there is also a human side to development issues, especially those issues which are oriented to providing relief to the wretched of the earth. This perhaps should remain our prime concern,” said In-Charge Election Cell of PPP Senator Taj Haider in a letter written to CEC Sikandar Sultan Raja for issuing orders to unfreeze the funds for ongoing development projects in Sindh.

Senator Taj Haider stated that ECP orders to freeze development funds in Sindh, including those allocated in the provincial budget for providing flood resistant houses to families devastated in last year’s floods and for solar panels to provide relief to the poorest of the families from hours of loadshedding and exorbitant electricity bills, are shocking to say the least. He stated that secretary and special secretary of the ECP are witness to the undersigned when amendment to Section 230 of the Election Act 2017 was being discussed by the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms and members of the committee had unanimously held that the caretakers would not be allowed to block or alter any policies or to stop ongoing development projects, he had expressed deep apprehension that the caretakers may block these two schemes aimed at rehabilitating devastated families.

“Little did I suspect that while we were stopping the caretakers, it would be the ECP itself which would take this illegal, unconstitutional and anti-people step,” he stated.

Taj Haider stated that a technical and financial model based on the concept of reconstruction of Germany after the World War-II had been designed and was being implemented for reconstruction of 2 million houses swept away by the torrents in Sindh. He stated that engineering designs for flood proof pucca houses have been prepared by a leading engineering university.

He stated in the letter that the devastated families are constructing their houses themselves after basic training and modern Information Technology is being used to release instalments of funds directly to the families without any delay after gathering evidence that the preceding stage of construction had been successfully completed.

The PPP senator stated that ownership of the land and house is given to the housewife as 50,000 houses out of the planned 2 million have already been built in a very short span of 3 months. “They are there standing on the ground for anyone to see or check if he/she wants to,” he stated.

Senator Taj Haider stated that he could hardly hold his tears when a girl hardly 4 years old held him by the hand and took him inside her house to show this grandfather what a beautiful house she had built. He stated that the tragedy of our social system is that those who construct houses are not allowed even to enter the houses they have built once a house is completed. “How on earth, Respected Sir, can we deprive small children the joy of living in and proudly showing us the house they have built with their tiny hands,” he asked in a letter.

The PPP senator stated that our bazars are shut. Electricity bills are being burnt. People are out on the streets. “Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, whose Urs Mubarak is being celebrated these days has used a phrase ‘Everyone in the country has become a Mansoor’ in his immortal poetry. Such is the condition resulting from our mistaken policies that we see around us these days,” he stated.

Senator Taj Haider stated inmates of 200,000 houses that have remained in darkness for generations have been provided solar panels so that they too can benefit from one of the so many bounties of Allah, which none of us can deny. He said the budgeted target is to put solar panels on 2.1 million houses and this is the direction in which the whole country should be going.

“Shall we reverse this direction and push our people back into centuries old darkness? Certainly not Sir, “he stated.

He said the most marginalised of our people, living in the remotest and most backward areas of our country, deserve electricity as a fundamental right and this is what the PPP is endeavouring to ensure.

He requested the CEC to order that all development funds for ongoing development schemes may immediately be unfrozen.