‘Proper system, not campaign, needed to dispose of garbage’

Pak Sarzameen Party Chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal said on Monday that not any campaign, but a proper system was required for disposing of garbage in Karachi.

“The word campaign itself is a clear reflection of th government’s failure to perform its due sanitary responsibilities,” he said while talking to Syed Shaikh Muhammad Shah Jahan Qadri Ashrafi Jilani, a spiritual figure and his followers on their visit to the Pakistan House, where they formally announced their joining the PSP.

Although the Sindh and local bodies’ governments were well aware of their working jurisdictions, the ambiguity of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board had paved the way for them to pass the buck of dilapidated sanitary conditions to each other, which had brought Karachi to the verge of destruction, said Kamal, who is also a former mayor of Karachi.

He said power and resources should be given to one individual or department so that the public could hold that person accountable for their good or poor performance. He said the only solution was an immediate change in the 18th constitutional amendment, ensuring the release of the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) share to the districts.

Kamal said the party’s ideology and manifestation had been acknowledged by its political opponents as they too were now demanding amendments in the 18th constitutional amendment, a strong local bodies set-up, early completion of the K-1V project, and release of the PFC provincial finance commission. The PPP had started playing politics on the discussion of Article 149 and was playing the Sindh cards although it knew that Sindh could not be divided, he remarked.

Kamal said Prime Minister Imran Khan should meet Chief Minister Syed Murad All Shah and come up with a solution to Karachi’s woes. The federation and the Sindh government had to own Karachi now and resolve the issues, considering its citizens as their own, he said and added that the PSP was ready to extend all-out unconditional support for the both federal and Sindh Government in the light of its very able leadership’s past experience. “We do politics not as a profession but as reverence,” he said.