PESHAWAR, Jan 9: The Pakistan People’s Party has said that only the Council of Common Interests (CCI), which has not yet been constituted, should decide about the mega projects like Kalabagh dam with a consensus among its members.

Speaking at a news conference here at the Peshawar Press Club on Monday, Abdul Akbar Khan, leader of the PPP Parliamentarians in the NWFP Assembly, warned that no individual could bypass the constitutional forums and take arbitrary decision on controversial matters.

He said Gen Pervez Musharraf had made a great mistake by issuing statements on a controversial issue, which might endanger to the existence of the country.

He said the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) had bailed out Gen Musharraf from a severe crisis and provided him a safe passage to retreat from his stand on the Kalabagh dam and to end the military operation in Balochistan.

He said Gen Musharraf knew that Sindh and the NWFP, which would directly suffer from the dam, would not accept his decision on it.

He said Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, with the consent of Gen Musharraf, had decided to bring the issue on the CCI forum.

He said formation of the CCI was a constitutional requirement, but the government had not yet constituted it because everything was being decided by one individual, who had been making arbitrary decisions on various national issues since coming to power in 1999.

He said people of the NWFP would not allow Islamabad to make the Kalabagh dam issue a local concern of Swabi, Charsadda and Nowshera districts. “It is a matter of life and death for the entire province,” he added.

He claimed that the Kalabagh dam would be a replacement of the Tarbela dam, which was the sole source of income (in the form of net hydel profit) for the NWFP. He asked the government to start de-silting of the Turbela dam if it wanted to increase capacity of the reservoir.

He said that a consultant on the dam, had ensured de-silting of the lake.

He asked the government to start de-silting of the reservoir instead of inundating the people of the NWFP.

He said they were not ready to get themselves trapped again after the construction of Tarbela and Ghazi Barotha projects, because the government had yet not rehabilitated the affected people of Tarbela dam.

He said Wapda had promised that it would release 11,000 cusecs of water from the Ghazi Barotha head-works into the river Indus for the protection of ecology and environment, but it had not done so.

Replying to a question, he said the rulers had kicked up the Kalabagh dam controversy in order to conceal their ineptness and mismanagement after the October 8 earthquake. He said the rulers had ignored parliament and vested all powers into the hands of military people to run the show.

MPAs Qurban Ali Khan and Tariq Khattak from Nowshera were also present on the occasion.