When Pakistan came into being Quaid-e-Azam decided to establish head office of Geological Survey of Pakistan (GSP) in Quetta keeping in view the rich potential of the area in Mineral resources.
Unfortunately due to obvious reasons no one from Balochistan could be inducted in GSP among top hierarchy and now the situation is that most of its Director Generals since its inception have belonged from other provinces. Therefore a camp office has been established in Islamabad which has now almost taken over as Head Office and Quetta office is now almost redundant.
Mines department of Balochistan unfortunately restricted itself to coal-mining. It should have devised a policy to regulate all mining activities in the Province by protecting the rights of people living in the near vicinity of the mining areas.
Camp office of GSP in Islamabad has now almost taken over as Head Office and Quetta office is now almost redundant
All major companies involved in mineral and energy like PPL, HUBCO, Uch Power etc are bound to utilize certain percentage of their income on the welfare of the local people. Unfortunately the Provincial Government could not evolve a system to monitor and gauge the income of these entities. Now whatever they spend on the welfare is without the consent and involvement of provincial government or local administration and nobody knows the extent of spending.
In most of the cases the agreement are missing either from the files of Mineral Department or local administration and theses entities are not prepared to share this information with anybody.
There is shortage of skilled labor in Balochistan because Poly-technique institutes do not offer the relevant courses. As a result all the aforementioned companies are at liberty to restrict the people from Balochistan only small scale jobs.
Mining Policy should not be left for a discretion of Section Officer and should be devised after due diligence and thorough considerations
A comprehensive policy is required to be devised after due consultation as in most of the cases, raw materials after extraction are transported to other parts of the country for refining and Balochistan is only paid the cost of shingle, sand etc instead of refined material.
These all issues need to be addressed in a comprehensive mining policy. Moreover construction of Schools, health facilities and roads must be limited to one time spending after which the same are handed over to Provincial Government from where they become a government entity and are treated at par with the existing facilities.
These institutions may be made a permanent responsibility of the entities. The framing of policy may not be left for a Section Officer level rather due diligence and after thorough consideration it may be finalized.
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