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Pakistan negates its own claim
By Dj Mathal
One of the responsibilities of a state is to provide protection and economic security to people living in any part the land under its control. If it fails to do so, the state has no right to call itself a state neither it will exist for long. Gilgit-Baltistan has long been under the control of Pakistan which has included it in its federally-administered regions commonly known as Fata. Islamabad has for a long time staged a drama under which it claims that the region had acceded to the country and for this it refers to a so-called agreement which nobody has accepted to be genuine. Since establishing its control over the region, Pakistan, as a state, has never fulfilled any of its obligations towards the region. What Pakistan has done with the region is that it gave the area the gifts of poverty, unemployment, backwardness, poor infrastructure besides pitching the inhabitants of the people against each other on sectarian basis.
The economic situation is that half of the money allocated for the region under the annual budget is spent on salaries of security personnel and other staff, petrol expenses and the half of the remaining is pocketed by the bureaucracy in corrupt departments. The left-over meager amount is spent on development projects which never meet quality standard.
In short, Gilgit-Baltistan lags behind in all sectors. The state has never taken initiatives to bring progress to the area like opening avenues to end unemployment among the youth.
Trade with China via the Karakoram Highway can be a perennial source of economic progress but it is also being targeted and there are dangers that it will also cease to exist if unjustified and rampant taxes on the local traders are not stopped.
People had started small businesses after taking loans from banks but the state-owned National Bank of Pakistan has announced to end the facility on the people by closing its regional office in Gilgit city. The bank alleges that loans were not returned in the region. By closing down one of its symbols in the region, Pakistan has itself negated its claim of the region being its part. It should be noted that billions of loans in all parts of Pakistan have been written off and there are billions of un-recovered loans but we have never heard of any such step to close down any bank office in any area. It is strange that the doors of banks in Islamabad have been opened on the people who are accused of taking millions of loans and defaulting on it in Gilgit-Baltistan. It means that the actual targets of the decision to close down the bank office are the common people, not the influential ones. People of the opinion say until Pakistan claims control over the region it should not close down the bank rather should facilitate the common man in getting loans from the NBP and other banks because trade with China also depends to a large extent on these loans.
Instead of closing down the bank offices, the government should have expanded its network in the region to provide soft loans to the educated youth in order to end poverty and unemployment in the region. This could have helped in ending the sense of deprivation in the region in a long run. |