Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has said that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has again launched a vicious attempt to cause an ethnic conflict in Karachi as it clearly sees its defeat in the forthcoming local government elections.
Addressing a press conference at the Sindh Assembly on Wednesday, the information minister said the MQM had again been attempting to promote hatred in the city through politics based on ethnicity and prejudice. He maintained that the opposition political parties in Sindh had resorted to protests against the newly passed Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2021 to prove that they had no interest in the genuine problems of the people.
Ghani conceded that there would be drawbacks in the working of the Sindh government and efforts could be made to overcome these issues. He, however, said that the same problems should not be used as a pretext to make an attempt to tarnish the law and order situation and promote hatred in the province.
“We condemn such an attempt and will not let it succeed,” he said. He added that although the MQM claimed that Karachi belonged to it but it had remained very much part of the process that was carried out in Islamabad to approve the controversial population census results against the interests of Karachi and Sindh.
He recalled that the MQM had previously parted ways with the Pakistan Peoples Party-led federal government four times against hike in petroleum prices but now the party was more interested in federal ministries instead of doing any protest against inflation.
Ghani was of the view that the MQM had been maintaining complete silence and not doing protests against the issue of hike in the prices of petrol and electricity, inflation, and natural gas crisis in Karachi despite the fact that Sindh accounted for a majority of the gas produced in the country.
He went on to claim that the MQM and other opposition parties in the province had secured electoral victories through undemocratic means, due to which they were making no real efforts to resolve genuine issues of the public.
To a question, the information minister replied that the Sindh chief minister had met the Sindh governor the previous day to convince him to sign the ordinance whose draft was recently sent to him by the provincial government as it served the national interest. He said the proposed ordinance to regularise irregular residential buildings in the province had been sent to the governor for promulgation as the Sindh Assembly was not in session.
He condemned the recent decision of the federal government to increase the electricity tariff of the powers consumers in Karachi by over Rs3 per unit as it was an attempt to extort over Rs7 billion from the city.
Ghani told the journalists that the Pakistan Peoples Party would hold protests in every part of the country on December 10 against the hike in the prices of essential commodities, unemployment, and electricity and gas-related issues caused.