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Tuesday March 19, 2024

PTI offers to resolve Centre-Sindh NFC row

By Azeem Samar
September 26, 2018

A Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmaker has offered to mediate in the fiscal disagreement between the federal and Sindh governments so that not just the province but Karachi too can get its due share of resources.

The offer came from MPA Khurrum Sher Zaman during the Sindh Assembly session on Tuesday as the House continued its general discussion on the newly presented provincial government budget for the remaining nine months of the current financial year.

Other opposition legislators who took part in the debate said the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) continued rule in Sindh has done sheer injustice with the people, claiming that such grave unfairness had not been committed even during the British colonial era.

Zaman said he is willing to mediate in the Centre-Sindh row over the division of resources under the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, for which the provincial administration should present a concrete case.

He said that under the NFC Award, Sindh gets a share of 24 per cent compared to Punjab’s 51 per cent, while Karachi does not get the rightful financial resources it deserves. The PTI’s Omar Ammari said the Sindh government should make itself fully accountable for all its “past misdeeds”. He cited the example of the new MPA hostel building that was to be built in Karachi in two years with an outlay of Rs2 billion, but its cost has gone up to Rs3 billion.

Ammari said the provincial administration has no regard for the children suffering from severe drought-like conditions in the Thar desert, where people have been dying due to a shortage of food resources.

He said the new Sindh government budget is nothing but the reshuffling of fiscal statistics that paints a very rosy picture of the province. However, he added, the situation on the ground is altogether different and very bleak for the people.

Mines & Mineral Development Minister Shabbir Bijarani said the provincial administration has had to slash its developmental budget because it did not get its due share of financial resources from the Centre.

Bijarani said the Sindh government has done excellent work in the health sector, as it expanded the services of Karachi’s National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and set up a CyberKnife unit at the city’s Jinnah Hospital.

The PPP’s Nida Khuhro said Sindh’s people are being treated unfairly by the federal administration because they had not voted for the PTI in the previous general elections. Nida said the new federal government has done nothing concrete for the development and well-being of the country and, instead, jacked up the prices of basic utility services.

Waryam Faqeer of the Grand Democratic Alliance said development has not been carried out anywhere in the province, adding that the road networks as well as the health and education sectors are in a shambles.

Faqeer said Sindh has been rendered virtually bankrupt due to unchecked spending by its rulers, adding that provincial government officials have either been imprisoned or are facing court cases because of their “corrupt” practices.

He said Anwar Majeed, a close associate of former president Asif Ali Zardari, is facing strict accountability, as in the past he had exploited the province’s farmers. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s Syed Abdul Rasheed said the Sindh government’s documents show that several reverse-osmosis plants have been set up in Lyari Town,

However, added Rasheed, he has failed to locate even a single such plant in the Lyari constituency that he had won in the July 25 elections. He said the sanitation situation in District South is moving from bad to worse despite an annual grant of Rs6 billion disbursed to the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board.

He said the budgetary estimate for the S-III sewage treatment project in the metropolis has been increased to Rs36 billion, adding that Rs6 billion has been spent on the project but it is still incomplete.

Javed Hanif of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan said he has perused the new provincial budget and found it completely visionless for the development and progress of Sindh’s people.