‘Govt policies creating sense of deprivation in Seraiki region

MULTAN: Pakistan Seraiki Party chief coordinator Ahmed Nawaz Soomro has said the PTI government has betrayed Seraiki people by not creating a separate province for them and the government’s policies are promoting the sense of deprivation among the people in Seraiki region.

Talking to The News on Saturday, Ahmed Nawaz Soomro said people of South Punjab felt deprived in terms of resource allocation, job quotas, educational institutions and development projects.

The quota of the Punjab in the federal civil bureaucracy is nearly 50pc of the total. Ordinarily the three Southern Punjab divisions of Multan, Bahawalpur and DG Khan should get 30pc of the Punjab quota in the civil bureaucracy, being 30pc of its population.

However, it has only 12 to 15pc quota in federal civil, jobs. As an example, the number of the Punjab officers in the three important civil service groups, i.e., DMG, police and OMG was 1,086 in 2013 when Rawalpindi Division was 146, Gujranwala Division 149 and Lahore Division 338.

As against this, the three divisions in Seraiki region including Dera Ghazi Khan, Multan and Bahawalpur jointly had 157 officers in these three groups, the Seraiki party chief said. The situation was aggravated due to absence of a zoning formula (mandated under Article 27 of the Constitution for recruitment in the Punjab. Zoning was mandated in the 1973 Constitution for 20 years, up to 1993. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa there are 5 zones. Balochistan has 6 zones and Sindh six, he said.

Talking to The News, Seraikistan Qaumi Council chairman Zahoor Dhreeja said in the 7th National Finance Commission Award the criteria has been expanded to include population, poverty, revenue collection and inverse population density. According to this criteria Punjab gets 51.7pc of total share in the 7th NFC. The Seraiki region should get 30pc of the total Punjab share in it but a review of the development projects in the Seraiki region shows that it gets far less than what it should get in accordance with its population.

Zahoor said likewise in the PSDP (Federal Government) allocations also the region has been given far too less than its due share commensurate with its population. The situation with regard to the allocation of Punjab ADP is even worse than the perspective of South Punjab, he said.

He said, "Downslide of Seraiki region seems to set in from 1970s onwards. In 1970, Multan was at Serial No 4 in terms of development and Rahim Yar Khan at 6 in Punjab. Over the years the downslide continued. In 2011, Multan went down to 13 and Rahim Yar Khan to 16 in the development index in Punjab. These figures indicated the steep downslide of the areas of southern Punjab region, he added.