Rana Sana should confiscate donations collected by Imran: Sharjeel

Karachi: Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon has urged Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah to confiscate all the public donations available with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan that were collected in the name of flood victims in the country.

He said such funds should be confiscated as they had not been spent on any charitable cause. Speaking at a press conference at the Sindh Assembly on Thursday, Memon lamented that neither did the donations collected by the PTI chairman reach flood victims nor did Khan himself visit people devastated by the natural calamity in the country.

He said the federal government should confiscate the flood-related public donations available with the PTI chairman and deposit them into the national exchequer as that money belonged to the people of Pakistan.

The Sindh information minister claimed that the Sindh government had been giving full attention to the cause of rehabilitating thousands of displaced flood victims in the province. “As we speak now, the Sindh chief minister is visiting the areas of the province affected by floods along with the irrigation minister and entire administrative machinery for personally monitoring the drainage operation,” Memon said.

He added that Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had been pleading the case of the flood victims wherever he went outside Pakistan to mobilise the international community for getting more emergency relief for them. The PPP chairman also internationally advocated the cause of justice for the Pakistani flood victims who had been affected by the global phenomenon of climate change, Memon stated, adding that Khan and his cronies during their stint in power wilfully harmed the national economy.

He went on to remark that Khan had hoodwinked the entire nation to make sure that he was not ousted from power. Memon maintained that the incumbent Punjab chief minister knew very well that Khan had falsely implicated his opponents after the attack in Wazirabad. He remarked that the Punjab CM would not dissolve the Punjab Assembly on the orders of the PTI chairman. Baseless corruption cases were lodged against families of the political opponents of Khan during the PTI’s regime in the country, the Sindh information minister said.

He alleged that Khan’s politics was full of double standards as earlier he had stated that amnesty schemes were introduced to provide benefit to plunderers of the country but later, his own sister Aleema Khan become one of the beneficiaries of such a scheme. Memon said the PTI chairman had kept on defending Farah Gogi, but she wasted no time leaving the country as soon as Khan’s rule ended. He alleged that Farah had been illegally involved in transfers and postings of administrative and police officials in the Punjab government.

Khan used the Federal Investigation Agency and National Accountability Bureau to victimise his political opponents, he said, adding that one such victim was PPP leader Faryal Talpur who was sent to jail from the hospital on the eve of Eid.

He said the Election Commission of Pakistan had rightly rejected a frivolous petition filed by the PTI to disqualify Faryal as the application filed by two lawmakers of the PTI contained baseless allegations that she had unlawfully concealed her personal assets.

Memon was accompanied by Sindh Labour and Human Resource Minister Saeed Ghani. To a question, Ghani replied that the provincial assemblies of Sindh and Balochistan had recently passed resolutions to constitutionally empower the federal government to carry out legislation on the issue of the Reko Diq mining.

He said the federal government had been authorised to this effect in view of the international investment for the Reko Diq project and the issue had nothing to do with the concept of provincial autonomy under the 18th Amendment. Memon said the PPP had introduced the 18th Amendment and it would safeguard the powers of the provinces guaranteed in the Constitution.