Governor Sindh sees hope for Karachi as ‘gulf with CM Murad Ali Shah narrowing’

Sindh Governor Imran Ismail has said that his one-on-one meeting with Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah the other day at the Governor House was a pleasant interaction and “the gulf between us is being narrowed”.

He said this while responding to a question on Friday during his visit to the Civil Hospital Karachi to distribute blankets among deserving attendants of patients. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MPAs Khurrum Sher Zaman and Ramzan Ganchi and noted businessman Sardar Yaseen Malik accompanied the governor.

While elaborating on his meeting with the CM, Ismail said all the stakeholders had reiterated their resolve to work together to build Karachi. He said the majority of the federally-funded development projects being built in the city would be completed by next month, and Prime Minister Imran Khan would come to the city to launch them.

The governor asked the administration of the hospital to provide utmost health treatment services to patients being treated at the hospital. He said that he had come to the hospital to distribute blankets on the instructions of Prime Minister Imran Khan in view of the prevailing wave of cold weather in the entire country.

He said the PM himself had been busy in establishing special shelter houses in the country for shelter-less people. Apart from this, special kitchens were also being established to feed poor people in the country, he added.

Ismail said it was the basic responsibility of the state to help and take care of the needs of the poor people in the country. He said that he would take whatever steps were required to implement the the vision of the PM to run the country in accordance with the principles of the state of Madina. He said that the state of Madina, which was considered ideal by the Muslims, was responsible for the welfare of its residents.

The meeting

A day earlier, Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had met Governor Imran Ismail at the Governor House. The one-liner statement issued after the meeting read that the chief executive and the governor in their meeting discussed the ongoing development projects in the province. The Governor House did not issue a formal handout or press release to share the details of the meeting with the media.

The meeting came a day after federal ministers Asad Umar and Ali Zaidi had arrived in Karachi to meet the governor along with lawmakers of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) belonging to Karachi.

They held a joint news conference at the Governor House to brief the media on the ongoing efforts of the PTI’s federal government to carry out mega development schemes in the city, and the fast-track funds being released to complete the ongoing Green Line project.

Before the news conference, the federal ministers and the governor had attended two top-level meetings of the federally constituted Karachi Transformation Committee (KTC) and the Sindh Infrastructure Development Company Limited to review the progress of the Centre-funded development projects under way in Karachi.

The KTC meeting was also attended by Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P). Umar, the federal minister for planning & development, also responded to the queries of the journalists at the news conference regarding the meeting.

Umar said it was wrong to assume that the meetings at the Governor House were convened to appease the MQM-P, the federal administration’s coalition partner, following the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chief’s statement urging the Muttahida to break its alliance with the PTI and ally with the PPP in Sindh.

The federal minister said that the schedule of the meetings at the Governor House had been finalised before the recent statement of PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.