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Tuesday March 19, 2024

CM terms one year of PTI govt ‘12-month suppression of people’

By Our Correspondent
August 19, 2019

The one-year performance of the federal government of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is so dismal that it cannot be called as the governance for the people and by the people; rather it has been 12-month suppression of the people by the government.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said this on Sunday morning while talking to the media after launching a tree plantation drive in the courtyard of the Frere Hall where he planted a sapling of neem tree.

The event was organised by the Sindh forest department and attended by almost all the cabinet members and a large number of senior government officers.

Censuring the federal government for its performance of its first year, the CM said the performance of governments anywhere in the world, particularly in the third world countries, was judged from their public-welfare policies but in Pakistan, the PTI government had set an ambitious tax recovery target and to achieve that it imposed heavy taxes, unleashing a wave of fear among the investors, as a result of which the investment was slashed and a large number of people lost their jobs.

“The salaried class cannot meet its domestic expenditures from salaries,” Murad said. He lamented that the stock exchange, which was at 42,000 points had dropped down to 28,000 points and the dollar was at its highest exchange rate due to the Centre’s policies.

He also decried the increase in the price of petrol, which caused an increase in the prices of essential commodities such as vegetables, flour, chicken and other eatables. “These are the one-year achievements of the one year of the PTI government in the Centre,” the CM said, urging the federal government to work for the welfare of the people.

Violations of Constitution

The CM alleged said that the Centre had not been complying with various constitutional requirements. He asked how it could be expected from the federal government to form policies that benefitted people when it was not following the Constitution.

He gave the example of the Legislative List Part-II of the Constitution and said that the federal government was bound to convene a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) after every 90 days but the last CCI meeting was held in November. “Now, 10 months have passed but the meeting of CCI, the most important forum where issues of power, water, gas and others are discussed, has not been convened.”

The CM added that in a similar way, a meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) was required to be held twice a year under the Constitution but the federal government had failed to do so.

“They [the federal government] had convened an NEC meeting before the 2019-20 budget to discuss development projects but he [the prime minister] left the meeting in the middle,” Shah remarked.

Cabinet reshuffle

Responding to a question regarding the cabinet reshuffle, the CM said all the portfolios of the provincial government were his responsibilities being the chief minister and he had to assign his various functions to his cabinet members to distribute his workload.

He said the portfolios had been assigned to the provincial ministers in consultation with the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). “There is no plan to make another reshuffle in the cabinet but when its need would be felt, it would be made again under the guidance of the party chairman,” he said.

Talking about talking the portfolio of the education department back from Syed Sardar Ali Shah, the CM said Sardar had done good job as the education minister and now he was performing well as the culture minister.

To another question, the CM remarked that his opponents had been trying to have him disqualified for many years but they had not succeeded.

Waste collection

Answering a question, Murad said the lifting of garbage and sweeping of trash was the job of the district municipal corporations (DMCs) and the cleaning of drains was the responsibility of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC).

“Despite the financial crunch, the provincial government had given Rs550 million to the KMC to clean the nullahs,” he said, adding that out of six, four DMCs, through their council’s resolutions, had given the job of waste collection in their limits to the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB).

He remarked that the waste collection board had performed relatively better in District South and District East but its performance in District West was not satisfactory.

Tree plantation

The CM said Karachi had been facing a shortage of trees, due to which he had started the plantation drive. The drive would be extended to all over Sindh, he added. “We have to improve the density of trees in the cities for better environment,” he said, adding that in the drive, trees that have fruits should be planted to attract birds of different species.

He directed all the deputy commissioners to plant trees in their respective districts and look after them properly till they had fully grown. “We are also going to ban plastic bags in the province from October 1,” he said and expressed his hope that the people of Sindh would support the cause.

Forest Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, PPP Sindh President Nisar Khuhro and other provincial ministers and PPP leaders, including Saeed Ghani, Sardar, Ismail Rahu, Murtaza Baloch, Faraz Dero, Murtaza Wahab and Aijaz Shah Shirazi, were also present on the occasion who planted saplings at the Frere Hall.

Ghani’s criticism

Sindh Information & Archives Minister Saeed Ghani also criticised the federal government’s one-year performance. He said the year had been full of blunders. Incompetence, inexperience, ineptitude, incapability and self-righteousness were the hallmark of the PTI government, he said, adding that leaders of the PTI should not have made lofty promises before the general elections.

The people of the country were going through the most difficult times of their lives during the PTI regime, he said. According to the information minister Prime Minister Imran Khan had been doing everything that he had censured the previous governments for. The PM failed to deliver on every promise he had made before coming into the power and the performance of his cabinet during the last year was quite reprehensible, Ghani said.