Daily Times

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday traded allegations over poor state of affairs in Sindh province, especially in the port city of Karachi.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that a shortfall in revenue collection over the last three years by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) brought development endeavours in Sindh to a standstill. On a visit to rain-hit districts of the province, the Sindh chief minister observed that the provincial government could not fulfil its commitments on various projects owing to FBR’s poor revenue collection.

According to the chief minister, revenue collections by FBR remained dismal throughout 2018 and 2019, whereas in 2020 both the national and provincial economies suffered serious damages due to Covid-19. These factors affected the completion of development works, observed the chief minister. In his view, this year’s rains caused the least amount of damage in terms of human lives and public property as compared to the last year’s.

Murad said that encroachments on Malir and Sukkur rivers are so dense that hardly 10 percent area has been left for rainwater to flow. “We will now have to remove the encroachments, otherwise urban floods will be inevitable,” he said.

Meanwhile, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz said that the Sindh government is responsible for the plight of Karachiites after recent rains but it is blaming the federal government to cover up its own incompetence and inefficiency.

Addressing a press conference along with Minister for Food Security and Research Syed Fakhar Imam, he said that PPP is politicising the natural disaster issues – coronavirus, locust and now recent rains. The PPP, which has been ruling Sindh for the past over one decade, is responsible for the sorry state of affairs in Karachi, he added.

He said that they claimed to transform Larkana into Karachi, but they converted Karachi into Larkana. They were given over Rs 14 trillion by the federal government during the past 10 years but they spent nothing for alleviation of poverty and improvement of health and education facilities in the province, he added.

He said that Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, instead of taking steps to save Karachi people from the deluge, were just blaming the federal government. One can judge the situation of rural Sindh by the plight of the people of urban areas, he added.

Faraz said that the performance of the opposition parties in the parliament is before the nation as they give priority to self-interest over national interest by voting against FATF legislation. To a question, he said that PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif had been given permission to go abroad for medical treatment but he made mockery of the law and indulged in political activities, rather than getting treatment. He said that the government would avail all legal options to bring Nawaz Sharif back to face the law of the land.

He said that the opposition parties are united only on the issue of protecting plundered national wealth, otherwise they have different agendas. He said that the meeting between Shahbaz Sharif and Fazlur Rehman ended in a fiasco and Bilawal and Shahbaz were divergent on many issues.