WASTAGE or embezzlement of public funds in Balochistan is another way of talking about MPAs and their development schemes — as per the provincial assembly, each member is entitled to identify schemes of worth Rs 250 million or more in every financial year.

Till last year, the entire Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) had been put on the disposal of all 65 MPAs under which the MPAs, at their discretion, identified schemes in their constituency worth Rs 650 million to Rs 700 million a year, while a few influential ones went up to Rs1 billion or more.

In Punjab, an assembly member enjoys the same privilege, but with only Rs50m to Rs70m at their disposal.

With complaints piling up from the public regarding massive corruption in funds and money being used for political means, the criteria of schemes for the benefit of either individuals or a small population or an area has been changed to collective or big projects in the light of civil-military relations in the current financial year (2016-17) with a vision to benefit the common man.

Before bringing about changes in the PSDP expenditure, Southern Command in collaboration of with the provincial government arranged a pre-budget seminar to mobilise the public view.

Both civil-military set up came up with the plan to divert over Rs 37bn out of total Rs71bn to collective schemes to benefit the common man instead of individuals.

These include the mega water supply project, mass transit train service and mass bus service for provincial capital, beautification of Quetta, improvement of infrastructure, health and educational facilities in all divisional and district headquarters.

Naturally the common man will benefit from these collective projects, and the credit will go to Chief Minister Balochistan Nawab Sanaullah Zehri.

The practice of engaging assembly members in the development process instead of local bodies started during Gen Ziaul Haq’s time who used this as a political bribe.

Later, instead of revoking the process, successive governments kept enjoying public funds and using it against their political opponents. So much so that with the passage of time, MPAs became powerful enough to choose the executing agencies, contractors, engineers on their own for various projects. As governments kept changing, funds kept increasing and then the PPP’s ruling coalition government in 2013 led by Nawab Aslam Raisani put the PSDP at the MPAs’ disposal.

With this shift, the planning and development department which otherwise has a pivotal role in preparing, assessing, evaluating and monitoring the development schemes practically became a post office — receiving files and implementing MPAs’ directions in letter and spirit.

For being elected on reserved seats, women and minority members suffered the most because of this practice as their parliamentary leaders used all the funds for themselves or party interests, except a few million rupees at their disposal.

“If the PSDP has been completely distributed among MPAs, who will identify development schemes to oblige the individuals,” asked the former additional chief secretary development, Naseebullah Bazai, adding that if this went on, Balochistan could not progress even in the next century.

Mr Bazai is a man who offended his bosses by his comments against the MPA schemes in front of military and political leadership, including Chief Minister Zehri, at a seminar. The morning after, through a government notification, he was sent to the Officer on Special Duty pool.

Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party’s (PkMAP) Mahmood Khan Achakzai, who was not in the assembly due to a boycott of the 2008 elections, went to the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2010 and prayed to the apex court to pass an order for changing the criteria of spending PSDP allocation on MPAs whims.

But when he came into power after the 2013 elections, the party adopted the same practice of using the PSDP funds as an effective tool against their political opponents — mainly the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and Awami National Party (ANP).

“Under the Constitution, it is the prerogative of the elected governments to prepare the budget and of public representatives to allocate the funds keeping the larger interests of the people instead of individuals,” said the newly appointed additional chief secretary development Daud Bareach, adding that now “the government deems it fit to allocate the funds for collective schemes”.

Military officials are of the view that it is the forces who are engaged in operations against the armed separatists across the province for a peaceful Balochistan, but their sacrifices are going waste because nothing is being done [by the government] to address the common man’s decades’ long grievances of under-development.

And it is just because of the misuse of public funds that the common man continues to suffer.

The finance department’s recent mega corruption case has given a bad name to Balochistan as well as to its elected representatives who will not be relied on in the future outside Balochistan for their common narratives like sense of deprivation, paucity of development funds, accusing Islamabad of being solely responsible for all their miseries.

Both Khalid Langove, the former finance adviser to the chief minister, and his secretary Mushtaq Raisani are facing allegations of misappropriating billions of rupees from public funds in the mega corruption case.

Rs670m in cash and properties’ documents worth million were recovered by National Accountability Bureau officials in raids from Mushtaq Raisani’s residence in May 2015.

According to senior military officials, a feeling has developed among the military set-up that unless the common man’s grievances of being underdeveloped are addressed, there is no use of conducting such military operations against separatists who always, as they say, use the ‘sense of deprivation’ card.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2016