Sindh opposition demands 50pc share in uplift funds, job quota for urban areas

KARACHI: Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Khawaja Izharul Hassan has demanded 50 per cent share in the development budget of the provincial govt and in quota for govt jobs for dwellers of urban areas of the province if the demand for a separate province in Sindh has to be stopped and reversed.

Taking part in the general discussion on the new Sindh government’s budget that continued for the seventh day on Thursday, the opposition leader belonging to the MQM said that it was no more acceptable that the provincial government was going to spend only Rs10 billion for development projects of Karachi when it had estimated to collect Rs166 billion as taxes from the city.

He also called for empowering the local governments with devolution of powers while also demanded the constitution of a provincial finance commission so that the Sindh govt could judicially distribute the available resources among districts as per the formula of National Finance Commission Award and in accordance with the spirit of the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

He also decried that the Sindh government in the coming financial year had increased the scope of indirect taxes on people to 93 percent while there had been no planning to collect the direct taxes.

He said that indirect taxes would cause further economic burden on impoverished masses of the province, especially those living in urban areas and already paying heavy taxes.

“Sindh main ho ga aab aisay guzara, adha tumhara adha hamara” (now there is only one way of survival in Sindh i.e. to equally divide resources between them and us) was the slogan repeatedly raised by the opposition leader in his speech highlighting that existing the “unjust” division of resources and job quota between urban and rural population of the province was no more tolerable. MQM’s lawmakers on the opposition benches repeated the same slogan in chorus.

He feared that there would be complete unmeritorious distribution of 50,000 jobs the provincial govt had announced to give in the coming financial year while the deserving youth of urban parts would get nothing from these jobs, given the fraudulent and corrupt means adopted by the authorities for issuance of certificates of domiciles in cities of the province.

He said that as per the latest estimates of population, the per capita development expenditure of Sindh govt in Karachi came to Rs2,200, which were insufficient.

The opposition leader also expressed the apprehension that Rs225 billion development budget of Sindh government for the upcoming financial year would be entirely squandered owing to the menace of corrupt practices in the province.

He also lashed out at Rs11 billion budget allocated for the chief minister’s secretariat in Karachi in the coming financial year as Rs800 million alone would be spent for doing development works at the CM House. He said that wasteful expenditures of CM’s Secretariat should be curtailed while its budget should be slashed by Rs05 billion, re-appropriating it for the welfare of hard-hit residents of Thar.

He lamented that commissioner Karachi who had been heading the operation for removal of advertising billboards in the city had been removed from the post as a punishment for him for adopting honest and strict implementation of law against the “billboards mafia”.

He said that thousands of trees had been cut down in the city to make way for installing illegal advertising billboards while FIR for each of the fallen tree should be lodged against the Sindh government.

Izharul Hassan said that Karachi during the previous eight years of PPP’s rule in the province, had been turned into a virtual massive garbage dump with no functional civic and municipal management system while the dwellers of Karachi had been facing a serious shortage of water supply with no end to water crisis in sight.

He said the Sindh government could not devise a mechanism to ensure fair and just distribution of water supply from the main Dhabeji source.

He said that similarly the chairman of provincial anti-corruption establishment had been removed from the position owing to his actions to lodge cases against corrupt elements in the province. He said the National Accountability Bureau in Sindh too had been completely failing in detecting and catching the corrupt elements active in the province.

He said that apart from grants being provided by the Sindh government for different healthcare institutions and foreign funding the govt had been receiving, there was nothing worthwhile which could be discussed in the entire budgetary allocation for the Sindh Health Department.

The opposition leader lamented that the development budget of Sindh govt didn’t contain any development scheme for the provincial Environment Department while it seemed that the provincial minister and secretary of the Environment Department were only there on their posts to do foreign tours.

He also expressed remorse that despite allocation and expenditure of millions of rupees as part of development funds, boundary walls of none of the govt school buildings having unsecured premises in the province could be built as per the security plan for educational institutions adopted after the tragedy of Army Public School, Peshawar.

He expressed the optimism in response to speeches earlier made by treasury lawmakers in the house that an Urdu-speaking person could also become the chief minister of Sindh as such a possibility would be achieved after the next general elections in 2018.

Earlier in his speech, Sindh Senior Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said that the land of Sindh province was like mother to its people while those who were designing to divide or break up their motherland could not become the true sons of the soil.

He recalled in the house that in the near past, the Sindh Assembly had unanimously adopted three resolutions against any movement or plan to divide Sindh for the creation of a new province so there should be no more speeches in the house against the unity and integrity of the province.

He said the Sindh government had several complaints regarding its due share from the federal divisible resources but it had never thought or done any planning against the integrity and unity of Pakistan. He said that other opposition political parties in Sindh had also clarified their stance that they would not tolerate any harm to the integrity of Sindh.

He said that there could be a sense of deprivation prevailing on an equal basis among the dwellers of urban and rural areas of the province but such feelings should not lead anyone to demand a division of the province.