SIALKOT City News

‘No democracy in SCCI’

From Our Correspondent

SIALKOT: Sohail Khawar Mir, chairman of the Democratic Founders Group (DFG) in the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), has said that there is no democracy in the SCCI in the true sense.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, he alleged that the practice of selection instead of election of the SCCI office-bearers had been continuing since long. He claimed that the DFG had been struggling to restore true democracy in the SCCI for the last 12 years. He alleged that there were hundreds of fake and bogus votes in the SCCI. He said that the SCCI and many other local trade bodies were primarily supposed to watch the interests of the business community, but the Ittehad Founders Group (IFG) leaders had allegedly turned them into political organisations for their personal interests.

When contacted, IFG general secretary Mian Khalil rejected the allegations and claimed that the SCCI elections had always been free and fair. It is worth mentioning that the SCCI elections for 2016/17 will be held on September 21 and 22.