Islamabad: Prime Minister, Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Friday suggested renaming the long-delayed Kachhi Canal project the “Pakistan Canal, ” and announced its swift completion along with other water storage projects across the country as the federal government had allocated Rs 368 billion this fiscal year for water storage projects including the Canal scheme.
The proposal came in response to a participant’s request to speed up work on the canal during the question and hour session after the prime minister’s address to the National Workshop Balochistan (NWB) participants, in which he told the delegates that no province could be considered developed unless all four advanced together, and pledged continued federal funding for Balochistan.
Addressing the workshop participants here at the Prime Minister’s House, PM Shehbaz welcomed the delegates from Balochistan, and said that the federal capital belonged equally to all provinces and that none of them were strangers there since they represented Pakistan as a whole. He noted that Balochistan was Pakistan’s largest province by area, though its smallest by population, and recalled that several Baloch states had voluntarily acceded to Pakistan in 1947, with other tribal leaders in the region accepting the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah the following year.
The prime minister said Balochistan’s scattered population and vast distances between towns meant the province required proportionately greater resources than more densely populated provinces to deliver comparable education, health and development outcomes. He cited the 2010 National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, under which Balochistan’s share of federal resources was doubled, a move was backed voluntarily by the other provinces, Punjab in particular. He said Punjab alone had contributed roughly Rsb11 billion a year toward this arrangement since 2010, describing it not as a favor but as the natural obligation of provinces bound together like members of one family.
PM Shehbaz Sharif also referenced a solar-power initiative that shifted around 27, 000 agricultural tube-wells in Balochistan onto solar energy, at a cost of about Rsb75 billion, of which the federal government contributed roughly Rs 50 billion.
On the Karachi-Chaman highway (N-25), known locally as the bloody road because of frequent fatal accidents, he said the government had decided to fund its conversion into a dual carriageway using savings from last year’s reduction in petroleum prices. He put the cost of the roughly Rs 300 billion project at completion within the next one to two years, saying it would then be regarded as a road of peace rather than a hazard.
The prime minister paid tribute to Abdul Hakeem, a sessions judge in Mastung, and an accompanying security official, who were recently killed, and prayed for their families. He said around 90, 000 Pakistanis from the armed forces, law enforcement and civilians across all provinces had been martyred in the fight against terrorism, which, he said, had been largely defeated by 2017-18 before resurfacing through what he described as an organised conspiracy.
He again alleged Indian involvement in funding and facilitating militancy in Balochistan, and said Pakistan had repeatedly urged Afghanistan’s interim government to deny its territory to armed groups operating against Pakistan, without success so far.
He also referred to Pakistan’s recent military confrontation with India, saying India had suffered a swift setback within days, and credited Pakistan’s diplomacy with helping stabilize the region.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Pakistan’s progress required sustained, disciplined effort from all provinces and the country’s roughly 240 million people, invoking the Allama Iqbal verse on collective strength that an individual counts for little alone, and draws strength only as part of a larger whole. He said the country’s recent economic and diplomatic gains needed to be consolidated through hard work rather than complacency.
The prime minister concluded that the federal government’s objective was for ordinary residents of Balochistan whether in Quetta, Kalat or Chaman to feel the same level of state attention to their development, education and healthcare as citizens of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Following his address, the prime minister took questions from workshop participants. Abid Saleem, from Quetta, asked whether the transparency reforms visible in federal government departments were being extended to the provincial level. PM Shehbaz cited the Federal Board of Revenue as an example, saying collusion and corruption had historically kept large sums out of the national treasury, and that in the past financial year, roughly Rs 800 billion in previously evaded indirect taxes, including sales tax, had been recovered.
He described this as a drop in the ocean given the scale of the task ahead, but said countries such as Japan and Germany had rebuilt themselves after wartime devastation through sustained hard work rather than shortcuts, and that the same transparent-governance model was being extended to the provinces.
Masood, from Balochistan, asked the prime minister to accelerate work on the Kachhi Canal project. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Rs 368 billion had been allocated this year for water storage projects nationally, including Kachhi Canal, and suggested the canal be renamed as the Pakistan Canal.
Khalida Yousuf, from Chagai district, thanked the prime minister for the government’s laptop scheme and asked that would it continue, noting that many female students in Balochistan face financial constraints. PM Shehbaz Sharif said the scheme, first launched when he was chief minister of Punjab under Nawaz Sharif’s federal government, distributed laptops nationally on merit including roughly 1, 00, 000 last year and that Balochistan’s quota was set 10 percent higher than other provinces. He also pointed to the Danish Schools programme being extended to Balochistan on the Punjab model as nine schools were underway, offering free residential education, sports facilities and classrooms to children from low-income families, saying earlier graduates of the programme had gone on to become doctors, engineers and civil servants.