MQM-P slams PPP, says Sindh's urban centres suffering from ‘economic terrorism’

Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui on Saturday accused the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led provincial government of meting out injustice to people living in the urban areas of Sindh, reported The News.

Siddiqui made the remarks while addressing a press conference at the party’s secretariat in Bahadurabad along with Aamir Khan, Faisal Subzwari, Kunwar Naveed Jamil and Khwaja Izharul Hasan.

“Urban Sindh had been suffering from ‘economic terrorism’ for the past 11 years,” Siddiqui, a former federal minister said while discussing the successive PPP governments’ apathy towards the urban centres of Sindh, corrupt practices of the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) that caused the recent mishap in Golimar locality, and posting of 73 police inspectors from Larkana to Karachi.

The MQM-P leader said Karachi was the country’s only metropolitan city where several ill-plans and conspiracies had been made to plunder it and such plans had been increasing rapidly in the past few years.

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“Some people had inherent hatred for Karachi which was evident from their bad decisions for the city,” Siddiqui said, adding that the PPP-led Sindh government had turned Karachi’s urban centres into villages through their corrupt practices.

“The Sindh government has occupied all the civic departments and entities for looting,” he alleged.

He added the impartiality of the Sindh Public Service Commission (SPSC) had already been questioned and after destroying it through ethnic biases and corruption, a new department, ‘Sindh Testing Service’, had now been set up to give jobs to favourites in open violation of merit.

“The people getting government jobs through bribery, favouritism, violation of merit and injustice will be appointed across the country and resultantly they will destroy the government institutions,” he said.

Continuing his tirade, the MQM-P convener said the Sindh government had banned recruitment in the four District Municipal Corporations (DMCs) – East, West, Central and Korangi – that were being run by the MQM-P. “But in the DMCs of Malir and South, which are being run by the PPP, they are recruiting people. It is a biased policy.”

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He also questioned the silence of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) over the ‘injustices’ with Karachi and other urban centres of the province.

Calling the PPP government in Sindh “an ethnic biased and corrupt set-up”, he said it had been neglecting the urban areas and also giving employments to the domicile-holders of rural Sindh on the vacancies meant for urban Sindh.

He said that the sense of deprivation in the people had now been turned into disappointment on the system because of “injustices”.

Discussing the Golimar mishap, Siddiqui said the SBCA had allowed illegal constructions since its inception. “After separating building control authority and other civic bodies from the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and recruiting non-local officers on the posts, such mishaps would have happened because they [SBCA officers] are not related to the city and were only recruited for looting the government institutions,” he said.

Siddiqui added that his party had heard that 73 police inspectors from the Larkana region had recently been posted to the Karachi region. “The provincial government recruits police personnel completely based on ethnicity and political affiliations from rural Sindh and then transfers them to Karachi and Hyderabad,” he alleged.

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He added that the MQM-P had approached the courts and all the authorities concerned to stop these injustices to the province’s urban centres but no one was listening to it.

Kunwar Naveed said one million jobs had been given to the people from rural Sindh in the past 10 years and the youth of urban centres had been ignored.

Demanding that a judicial commission be formed, the MQM-P leader said the Supreme Court through a commission or a judge should examine as to how urban Sindh had been neglected due to the quota system since 1973.

“It was one of the MQM-P’s points in the agreement it signed with the PTI while supporting the latter in forming the government in the Centre,” he said.

Hasan said the party would raise the issue of injustices with the province’s urban centres not only with courts and in Parliament but also organise a series of protests in which it would surround the deputy commissioner offices and the Chief Minister House in the city.

He also asked the people of rural Sindh, the Grand Democratic Alliance and other political parties in the province not to get deceived in the name of Sindh.

Originally published in The News