Karachi to get Rs22.5bn in next budget under LG dept’s schemes: Ghani

Sindh Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani has said an allocation of Rs22.5 billion alone has been made in the provincial budget for the next fiscal year to carry out development schemes in Karachi under his department.

Talking to journalists at the Sindh Assembly building on Tuesday, he said the allocation for Karachi’s development projects in the new budget had increased to Rs52.6 billion if schemes of other government departments were also counted.

The minister rubbished the claim of Mayor of Karachi Waseem Akhtar that he made at a press conference on Monday that the Sindh government had allocated just Rs1.6 billion for the development schemes of the city. He said the 2019-20 budget comprised 96 new schemes of the local government department as 77 of them belonged to Karachi.

Ghani said the local government department had been acting to implement107 schemes in Karachi. He said the political opponents of the Pakistan Peoples Party had been making false claims and providing incorrect information to the masses just to do political point-scoring.

“But we will continue to fulfil the promises we made with the people of Karachi under our resolve to do public service.” The minister added that the Sindh government had been fully serious to resolve the problems being faced by the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board, and in this regard the chief minister had been also active.

He said the government in collaboration with the World Bank would spend a heavy sum of $1.5 billion in the coming five years alone on the water supply and sewerage schemes of the KWSB.

He said the decades-old infrastructure and pumping stations of the KWSB would be revamped after materialisation of this scheme in assistance with the World Bank, and this would also help in resolving problems with the sewerage system. The opposition Muttahida Quami Movement had been working virtually as the “B-team” of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf in Sindh, particularly in Karachi.