News Desk
PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government has prepared a draft to amend laws regarding the use of its official helicopter, as once the law is in place, nobody will be able to challenge its usage.
Newly amendment draft provide amnesty to question the usage of the K-P government’s helicopter since November 2008 and use of the helicopter for all purposes will be regarded as legitimate and valid.
Draft also enables the usage of the helicopter, for rent and for personal reasons, without being questioned. However, the permission of Chief Minister of the K-P province must be required to use government’s helicopter for personal use.
The newly-presented draft, also authorizes the K-P ministers, advisors, special assistants, and government employees to use the K-P government helicopter, in addition to its primary usage for the CM K-P.
Former Prime Minister and chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) frequently uses the K-P government helicopter for personal traveling as well as for commuting to party rallies and gatherings.
Earlier, NAB issued a list of 1,800 defaulters and unauthorized users of the K-P government’s helicopter including former Prime Minister Khan who ‘broke the law’ forbidding the usage of K-P helicopter, for personal and other use.
The Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly ordered the NAB to recover all the amount from former premier Khan and all unauthorized users and defaulters on the list issued by the NAB.
According to the media reports, Imran Khan used K-P government helicopter for 137 times for personal commuting, costing Rs55.5 million and Rs66.9 million to the national resource, as per official and commercial rates, respectively.
On the other hand, the district monitoring officer of Charsadda accused CM K-P Mahmood Khan and other ministers of misusing the state’s resources for political rallies and gatherings of Imran Khan in the recent by-election including Khan as a candidate.
Imran Khan during his premiership already received criticism for using the government helicopter for personal purposes. The NAB summoned Khan for allegedly using K-P chopper and also conducted an investigation into this matter against Khan.
