PPP men in upper Chitral jump into war of words
BOONI, Jan 12: Local leaders of the PPP here on Monday jumped into the war of words between the district president of their party Salim Khan and his rival former MPA from upper Chitral Haji Ghulam Muhammad.
At a meeting presided over by Abu Lais Ramdasi, the president of PPP upper Chitral, it was stated that before leveling corruption allegations against Salim Khan, Ghulam Muhammad and his supporters should have a retrospect and look back to the past of the former MPA.
They said less than two years ago the JUI local leaders were declaring Ghulam Muhammad as the most corrupt politician and a pharaoh for purchasing votes and causing defeat to their candidate in the elections. But after joining the JUI, Ghulam Muhammad has started thinking that people of the area have forgot his corrupt practices so quickly.
Abu Lais Ramdasi said there was no need to come up with any proof of corruption against GM. If anyone wants to find out the cases of corruption against the former MPA, he added, they should only look into the record of the supply of wheat to Yarkhun to understand how he embezzled the commodity and filled his pockets as the food department contractor. He said GM had also set up a petrol pump in the remote Marthing village of Yarkhun but was selling its quota of petrol in Booni and Chitral, which was also a corrupt practice.
He said in both the incomplete Booni-Matuj and Booni-Torkhow road projects, GM’s right hand men, Mr Daud and Fazlur Rehman of Booni, were the contractors who embezzled the funds under the full protection of Ghulam Muhammad.
During his tenure as MPA, Ghulam Muhammad could not reconstruct a portion of the Chitral-Mastuj road near Kuragh for years, forcing the local people to repair it on their own. In a sarcastic gesture, the people of the area named the damaged road as Ghulam Muhamamd bypass, he added.
About the allegation by Ghulam Muhammad that the PPP MPA Sardar Hussain was spending public funds on the construction of a road to his own house in Booni, the PPP leaders said the said road served not only the house of the MPA but also about 40 other houses in the area.
They said Ghulam Muhammad during his tenure as MPA had spent millions of rupees on the construction of a link road which only served his own house. They said the former MPA had also installed street lights on the road to his house.