NWFP seeks early recovery of hydel profit
Bureau Report

PESHAWAR—The NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani presided over a high level meeting here in Peshawar that decided to use the official channels to get an early positive response from the federal government on the payment of net hydle power being guarantor on the issue to frontier province.
The meeting held at Frontier House Peshawar thoroughly debated the mechanism and the correspondence made with other party on net hydle issue WAPDA to generate response for payment of net hydle profit to frontier province. The meeting attended by Abdul Hafeez Pirzada renowned lawyer, Chief Secretary Ijaz Ahmad Qureshi, Barrister Zahid, administrative secretaries Finance, Law and others, decided the future course for the payment to NWFP in the light of the verdict of Arbitration Commission.
The chief minister congratulated the entire team of the province for the settlement of one of the most complicated issues logically adding that his government has proved its sincerity in its struggle for the rights of the province. He said that the right on the net hydle profit was in reality, the right of the people of this backward province. He had talked to President and Prime Minister to ensure the consensus decision of the Arbitration Commission. He said that the verdict of the Arbitration Commission was binding on both the parties as delay in the process of delivering justice will create deprivation and can became a source of reinforcing the thinking that the people would wait and wait for their rights from the federal government. Under the verdict the federal government would ensure being guarantor that the second party pays to NWFP Rs. 110 billion in five installments each of 22 billion rupees in a period of every three months. Delay in the payment was unjustified, he added. He said that we are calculating our options if we got delayed response.
Durrani said that once we get our right as decided by the Arbitration Commission the province would have the resources to construct more hydle power stations under 157 of the constitution. Hopefully it would enable us to exploit our resources for industrialization and commercial activities that would generate more jobs and ultimately lead to overall economic development and prosperity of the province.
He feared that delay in the process of implementation would stop the process of development and resultantly the public pressure on the government would mount. He said that what is significance of the verdictwas legitimacy of the future claims, the provincial government espouses. He said that if WAPDA defaulted to pay to the province as agreed, the federal government being sovereign guarantor will arrange payment to the province.
The participants of the meeting quoted the World Bank observations that when the net hydle power issue was settled at 6 billion rupees; it came down to almost two billion rupees because of high inflation. The chief minister hoped that there would be a forward moving on the provincial autonomy and the province would get its share otherwise there will be no other option but to stage a protest by all the elected representatives belonging to senate, national and provincial assemblies and district governments of the entire province in Islamabad.
NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani on Wednesday said that the provincial government was making all-out efforts to strengthen hands of district government for resolving civic problems confronting the city dwellers.
Addressing at a keys handover ceremony of tractors and trolleys to officials of district government for cleanliness and waste removing purposes, the chief minister said that old pipelines in the overall city would be replaced with new ones and work on this project would be initiated within a week. He said that his government was taking realistic and concrete measures for making system of cleanliness, sewerage, sanitation and drainage more effective and appropriate in the district Peshawar.