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Thursday March 28, 2024

‘New PPP govt to readily install RO plants in hard-hit areas’

By Our Correspondent
August 21, 2018

The new government of the Pakistan Peoples Party will readily install reverse-osmosis filtration plants in areas of District West and Lyari to overcome the acute water shortage there, former information minister and PPP MPA Syed Nasir Hussain Shah has said.

Speaking at a reception held in honour of PPP’s successful election candidates, Shah said that in his first meeting with PPP’s elected representatives, party chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had issued directives to install RO plants in hard-hit areas of Karachi, including Lyari, to provide urgent relief to residents, instead of waiting for the completion of the K-IV Greater Karachi Water Supply Scheme.

The former minister lauded Bilawal’s vision that despite losing the general election from Lyari, he had readily ordered development projects in the area, including the provision of potable water.

Shah said the new PPP government in Sindh would establish academies to train the youth of Lyari in different sports such as football, cycling and boxing according to the international sporting standards.

He added that the PPP government would do its best to nurture the talent of budding athletes of Lyari to give them the international recognition they deserve. According to the MPA, the Sindh government would continue carrying out development projects in the entire province continuing with the work it had started during its previous tenure.

He added that the PPP government would continue carrying out development projects in the areas of the province where it had lost general elections. Shah claimed that PPP’s mandate had been stolen in some areas of Sindh in last month’s general elections. “PPP’s public mandate had been taken away in the rest of the country but this conspiracy had been successfully foiled in Sindh by the party’s loyalists,” he said.

The former minister advised the PPP candidates who had lost from their constituencies to not get disappointed and instead began preparing for the forthcoming local government in the province.

A comprehensive report would be submitted to the PPP chairman containing all the reservations and objections of the losing candidates of the party over the entire polling exercise in their respective constituencies, he said. Shah added that PPP would take due disciplinary action against its activists and office-bearers who violated the party’s decorum during the general elections.

Water shortages have become the norm in many areas of Karachi. Lyari, a stronghold of the PPP for more than 40 years, is among the worst hit. Residents are so wary of the PPP’s performance that in July when Bilawal had led an electoral rally in Lyari, scores of residents had come out in protest against the lack of basic civic amenities in the locality. Many of the protesting women carried pots and pans, shouting, “Pani Doh, Pani Doh (Give water, give water).”

Moreover, unhappy with the PPP’s performance, the constituency overwhelmingly voted for candidates from other parties in last month’s elections, propelling PTI’s candidate to the National Assembly and Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s candidates to the provincial assembly instead.