Civic issues can’t be solved at gunpoint, Ghani tells KamalBy our correspondent

The Sindh Assembly will not make laws if somebody’s holding a gun to the legislators’ heads, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Saeed Ghani told a news conference on Monday.

Ghani said that only the provincial legislature was empowered to deal with the issue of delegating municipal authorities and amending the local government law, adding that the PA could not be forced to legislate.

The PPP Karachi leader said former city mayor Mustafa Kamal should be well aware that civic issues, such as water shortage, could not be solved at gunpoint. “Gone are the days when the city could be coerced into shutting down.”

Ghani, however, acknowledged that it was the right of Kamal’s Pak Sarzameen Party to present its demands because the water issue concerned everyone, saying that efforts were afoot to resolve the important civic matter.

He challenged the former mayor to first close down his own locality before he could even think about attempting to shut down the entire metropolis.

The PPP senator said Sindh’s chief minister could not delegate more powers to the current mayor under compulsion, adding that the provincial government was committed to solving the people’s problems, citing the example of the development projects worth billions of rupees under way across the city.

He assured the people that allocation of funds for developing Karachi would be increased manifold in the provincial administration’s budget for the next financial year.

He said the opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement should first acknowledge its “responsibility” in “ruining the municipal institutions of the city by overstaffing and misusing official resources for political gains”.

He added that the current mayor should first admit to his “sins” regarding “hundreds of ghost employees and misuse of official vehicles by his party’s office-bearers” before expecting any help from the Sindh government to revive the municipal agencies of the city.

Ghani said the city mayor should confess his “mistakes” regarding “destruction of the municipal agencies and taking no action against those who ruined the municipal services”.

He claimed that the PPP would emerge victorious in the upcoming by-election for PS-114 (Karachi-XXVI). He said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz had no political standing in the province because the provincial presidents of the two parties had jumped ship to the PPP.

He said PTI Chairman Imran Khan could not conquer Sindh through politicians like Liaquat Jatoi who had no following or vote bank in the province. During the news conference, 10 independently elected councillors belonging to District West of the city also made the announcement of joining the PPP.