Sindh cabinet bans recruitment during caretaker govt

Sindh’s chief minister said on Friday that he, his cabinet members and all the MPAs of his party are going back to the people with dignity and respect because “we stood by them at a difficult time and served them to the best of our abilities”.

During his cabinet’s farewell meeting that he chaired at the CM House, Syed Murad Ali Shah said that at the start of his government’s tenure in 2018, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) then federal government was not ready to cooperate with and had tried to destabilise the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Sindh government.

He said that under the guidance of former president Asif Ali Zardari and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, he kept serving the people of the province steadfastly.

He also said that conspiracies of the PTI’s federal government had still been in progress when the Covid-19 emergency hit the country hard.

“It created a wave of fear and insecurity among the people,” he said, adding that his government took concrete steps to face the situation and save the people. Shah said the province was yet to recover from the Covid-19 losses when the floods affected the entire province in 2022.

“I had almost lost hope of draining such a deluge, but the cabinet members, party workers and the leadership supported me, and finally the floodwaters were disposed of and wheat crops were sown.”

He said they had harvested the bumper wheat crop and achieved more crop than our food requirements, and now a record cotton crop was about to be cultivated.

“We all — the party leadership, ministers, advisers, special assistants, coordinators, MPAs and party workers — stood shoulder to shoulder with the flood-affected people,” he said, adding that the houses destroyed by the floods were being reconstructed and the title of the land was being given to the affected people. He also said they were going back to their people with respect, dignity and a feeling of satisfaction that they served the people.

He thanked his cabinet members, Chief Secretary Sohail Rajput and former CS Syed Mumtaz Shah for their support and cooperation. He also thanked the secretaries, heads of provincial government institutions, staff of the CM House and everyone who worked with him during his tenure.

The cabinet lauded Shah for his performance, his resolute stand to protect the rights of Sindh’s people, and his support to them when they were harassed by the National Accountability Bureau and other institutions at the hands of the PTI’s federal government. Every cabinet member paid rich tributes to him for his services.

The cabinet also decided to ban recruitment against the Sindh government’s job vacancies, except for the process being carried out by the Sindh Public Service Commission and the necessary recruitment for the development projects launched with the assistance of donor agencies. The incoming caretaker government in the province would abide by this ban.