Monday, 29 Jun, 2009
QUETTA: The National Party has demanded that all decisions in the National Finance Commission should be taken by majority and no province should have the power to veto a decision.
Addressing a seminar here on Monday, the party’s president, Senator Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, said the rule of unanimous decisions by all federating units for the NFC award was disadvantageous for smaller provinces.
He said the government took all important decisions on the basis of majority and the same principle should apply to the NFC award.
Dr Malik has represented Balochistan in the NFC in the past.
He said all taxes collected at the federal level should become part of the divisible pool which should be distributed among the provinces judiciously and fairly.
'The Constitution is vague about fair distribution of resources among the provinces.'
He said the federal government had failed to do justice with Balochistan on the issue of revenue from natural gas. Gas was found in Sui in 1951 and its commercial production started in 1954.
Balochistan’s share in Pakistan’s energy resources was over 80 per cent in early stages.
The senator said the entire country had benefited from Balochistan’s gas which laid the foundation of industrial and commercial base.
'Being the cheapest source of energy in the country it was used and misused by all without making any payment to the province till the 1973 Constitution called for payment of royalty on natural gas to the government of Balochistan,' he said.
He said the government was giving a huge subsidy of Rs37 billion for generating power and producing urea from Balochistan’s gas, while the gas produced by other provinces was not used for the purposes.
He said that less than one per cent of the urea produced in the country was consumed in Balochistan and, therefore, its people were not benefiting from the subsidy.
Maulana Manzoor Mengal of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, former provincial minister Qahar Wadan of the Pukhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Shah Jehan Baloch of the Institute for Development Studies and Practices and journalist Sadiq Baloch also spoke at the seminar.
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