No to US visas; yes to US toilets!

Though he might have passed a populist statement regarding a possible ban on US visas to Pakistanis, it appears PTI chairman Imran Khan has no such pride against accepting assistance from the US building toilets in the province that he runs. “I want to tell all Pakistanis today, I pray that Trump bans Pakistani visas so that we can focus on fixing our country,” Khan told a rally in Sahiwal. But in November last year, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) completed construction of 26 toilets at a bus terminal in Peshawar. At the moment, the USAID operates four programs in the provinces, the toilets, coming under the Municipal Service Delivery Project. The other three are the Establishment of Urban Policy Unit, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governance Project and the Gomal Zam Dam Command Area Development and On-Farm Water Management programs. The above four are funded and managed by the USAID alone. Besides these, US assistance is also coming into KP via a Multi Donor Trust Fund established for the purpose. Despite many declarations by PTI leaders of refraining from relying on international aid, foreign-funded and managed programs not only continue in the only province that the party run, but, in certain sectors, do most of the developmental work.