After the USD 6 billion penalties was announced for not giving a mining lease to the Tethyan Copper Company and the subsequent embarrassment suffered internationally, provincial Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief in Balochistan, Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind on Thursday called for the establishment of a truth commission on the Reko Diq fiasco before closing a new deal on the gold and copper mining project.
The demand came days after Chief Minister Mir Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo's government had organised an in-camera briefing for the provincial lawmakers to update them on different aspects of the issue, reported Dawn.
Rind's demand is justified as the people deserve to know who is responsible for this debacle. "The taxpayers, who will be asked to pay for this fiasco, also have a right to be informed on the matter," said Rind.
Earlier, the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) had announced the penalty against Pakistan, reported Dawn.
When the ICSID announced the award over a breach of the Australia-Pakistan Bilateral Investment Treaty and denial of the mining lease to TCC at Reko Diq in 2011, Prime Minister Imran Khan had formed a commission to "investigate the reasons as to how Pakistan ended up in this predicament, who was responsible for making the country suffer such a loss and what are the lessons learnt so that mistakes made do not repeat in the future".
But the commission is yet to conclude its assignment and make its findings public. Hence, the demand from the provincial chief of the ruling party must be heeded and a new commission set up to carry out its investigation within public view for the sake of transparency, reported Dawn.
"Responsibility needs to be fixed as it is not just an issue of enormous fines that the country is being asked to pay for poor governance and faulty decision-making but also lack of transparency in matters of public importance," said Rind.
Reko Diq, located in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, is one of the world's biggest untapped copper and gold deposits. Development of the asset has been stalled for nearly a decade because of a long-running dispute.
( With inputs from ANI )
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