Ashiana, Green Punjab schemes are mega corruption projects: PAT

Lahore: The research wing of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek has revealed that the Green Punjab Programme and the Ashiana Housing Schemes are fake and full of corruption and it is pathetic that the members of Punjab Assembly do not raise these issues on the floor of the House as the Punjab rulers are eating up the hard earned money of the tax payers.

The report says that in the last three years the Punjab government has collected billions of rupees by selling farms in the name of Ashiana Housing Scheme and to date and a few houses have not been completed. It said this scheme is only used for politics. It said the cash earned by selling farms is being used by the Punjab Chief Minister who spends it to his personal self and to his own projection. It said that over 60,000 poor people have applied to get houses in these schemes and millions of rupees have been collected under this guise.

The report said that if every year 4 lakh low-income group people are provided with their own houses, than in 15 years 70 per cent of the poor would have their own houses. But the Punjab government has its own priorities and despite using all the government resources to date a hundred houses have not been completed.

The report said that six months ago large scale corruption was revealed in the tenders for the Ashiana Iqbal Road, Burki. The DG Anti-corruption was threatened with dire consequences for probing the corruption in this project and was finally made an OSD and the MPA involved for revealing this corruption was also removed from the project supervision.

The report said that the Green Punjab Programme is also a fake project. The factual position is that in the province till 2008, farm-to-market roads infrastructure consisted of 37000 km having a worth of 100 billion rupees, was ruined due to non-utilization of the repair funds. The maintenance and renovation of these roads was necessary after three years. Rs 38,000 per kilometer was released by the government after every three years for this purpose. But to the surprise of everyone, for the last six years, these funds have never been used on the maintenance of these roads. The report said that had those funds been used for road maintenance than today 100 billion would not have needed adding further burden on the tax payers of Punjab.

The report said that to cover up this corruption as the popularity of the PML-N continues to fall in the rural areas, the rulers introduced the Green Punjab Scheme. The report said that if this continues for the next three years than Rs 45 billion can only be spent on the maintenance of these roads and that would cover only 45 per cent of the infrastructure.

The report said that this negligence and criminal act of the government has not only badly affected the worn out roads but has also affected the social life of the villages and in the last five years 110 per cent increase in dacoities has been recorded. The report said that in technical terms these roads are referred as “triple surface treatment” roads and in six years Rs 3 billion has disappeared due to massive corruption of the rulers and to cover up all the corruption the Punjab Government announced the Green Punjab Scheme.

The Pakistan Awami Tehreek spokesman while announcing its White Paper of the performance of the government had said that further reports would also be released and this report is part of the series of reports prepared by the PAT on the bad governance and corruption of the provincial government. Further reports would soon also be unveiled on the education and health sectors. According to the PAT the Punjab government has restricted all its attention on the Lahore Metro Project, Raiwaid Road, Lahore Ring Road, Azadi Chowk and Rawalpindi Metro Bus project. And due to this the rural areas of Punjab have been left in ruins.