“People of Balochistan have been deprived of roads, employment, education and health facilities,” lamented Balochistan National Party (BNP) Chairman, Sardar Akhtar Jaan Mengal, on Wednesday. The leader was addressing Shikarpur Press Club during his visit to Shikarpur, He added that Balochistan had been facing many issues for at least 70 years. “We gave a path by making a six-point agreement in August 2018 and a nine-point agreement during the election of President of Pakistan with sitting government to resolve the issues of Balochistan,” the member of National Assembly claimed. Mengal asked the government to come forward and play its due role if it sincerely wished to resolve the core issues of Balochistan. It should work for the betterment of the province, he maintained, because, without development, Balochistan could not reach up to the mark. The government was said to have inked a six-point and a nine-point agreement, through which it had “directly or indirectly” admitted that the issues of Balochistan were real. Mengal further said, “You have heard the name of Gwadar and its development, but the ground reality was bloody different.” He claimed that there were no water, electricity and gas facilities in Gwadar, despite the allocation of Rs 65 billion dollars for the purpose. Yet, 70 per cent of the amount had allegedly been spent in Punjab province while even two per cent was not spent in Balochistan and Sindh, Mengal cried. Talking about government plans to build an airport and a power project with an estimated cost of one billion dollars, he said that such projects remained only in papers. He called it a sheer injustice to Balochistan, due to which its people increasingly felt inferior. Replying to a question with respect to the development of Gwadar, the MNA said that the people of Balochistan were in favour of development, but would not allow the real provincial demography to be changed in the name of development. To another question about the 18th Amendment, he replied that while the constitutional amendment had given little powers, not complete autonomy, to the provinces, its rollback would increase the inferiority. The BNP leader announced that if the government failed to fulfil its promises, BNP would obviously part ways with the government. The BNP was said to have given a period of one year to the government. Responding to the development of Gwadar, Mengal said a road project had been made during the regime of General Pervaiz Musharraf with funding from the Asian and World Banks. Apart from that, there was no development in Gwadar, he claimed. The legislator urged the government to utilise at least 50 per cent of the funding and resources in development projects so that Balochistan could develop. He was flanked by a number of leaders, including Ghulam Rasool Brohi; Dr Bashir Ahmed Brohi; Muhammad Siddique Brohi; Muhammad Nawaz Brohi; Rafique Jaan Brohi and others.