THE Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order 2009 granted so-called self-rule to the people of Gilgit-Baltistan, establishing a de facto province-like status without meeting the constitutional requirements of formally declaring it part of Pakistan. Earlier, during General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime, a special committee was constituted under the chairmanship of Syed Ijlal Haider Zaidi to determine the status of the region. The committee held several meetings to deliberate on administratively attaching the Northern Areas (NAs) with NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
In one such meeting, the Resident Commissioner of the Northern Areas informed the committee that the public had expressed a desire to be attached to Punjab. However, Abdul Wahid, a bureaucrat from the Northern Areas and the committee secretary, confronted the Resident Commissioner. He firmly stated that not a single person in the Northern Areas wished to be administratively controlled by Punjab or NWFP. Instead, he suggested granting full constitutional rights to the region rather than debating its geographical attachment or detachment.
On November 26, 2018, WAPDA resubmitted the second revised PC-1 for the Satpara Dam project. The original contract had been awarded to Descon, a company owned by Razzak Dawood, a minister during the Musharraf regime. The company deleted a 5-kilometer-long tunnel, initially approved in the PC-1, meant to divert water from the Shantung Nullah. Construction of the Satpara Dam commenced in April 2003, with completion scheduled for November 2011. Surprisingly, when the project was completed, neither the GB administration nor WAPDA objected to the contractor’s omission of the tunnel. The final bill was cleared without issue. Intriguingly, WAPDA revised the PC-1 seven years after the project’s completion to formally delete the tunnel, giving the contractor, who later served as a minister in the PTI government, a clean chit. This was particularly concerning as the contractor was also aspiring to oversee construction of the Dassu-Bhasha Dam, funded in part by public donations collected by then Chief Justice Saqib Nisar.
Recently, a tragic landslide claimed the lives of five young men from the village of Shengus while traveling on the Skardu-Jaglot road. The contract for this road project, worth 30 trillion rupees, was awarded to the Frontier Works Organization (FWO) and scheduled for completion by 2020. The project included the construction of five tunnels to reduce the 12–14-hour journey to just 2–3 hours. However, no one has held the FWO accountable for the missing funds and incomplete tunnels, forcing commuters to navigate hazardous mountain routes prone to landslides. This lack of transparency and accountability, which plagues the entire country, is especially dire in Gilgit-Baltistan. Without constitutional protections, the people of this half-baked province have no forum to demand answers, leaving their cries unheard as they suffer the consequences of negligence and corruption.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Karachi.
