Sindh govt stoking hatred to divert public attention from its poor performance, alleges Khurrum Sher Zaman

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Karachi president and MPA Khurrum Sher Zaman on Saturday said that one of his Friday statements had been misrepresented and therefore he tendered his apologies if it had hurt anyone’s sentiments.

Zaman came under severe criticism by a section of activists on social media after he had expressed concerns over the transfer of 171 police officers from the rural Sindh to Karachi and questioned if the Sindh government was planning to harass Karachi’s traders through them.

On Saturday, he, along with other PTI leaders, addressed a press conference at the Insaf House, the party’s secretariat, and said the people of Sindh needed to recognise the enemies within them. According to him, a conspiracy is being hatched up to make people fight and it is mainly to divert the public attention from bad governance and poor performance of the provincial government.

Zaman said Sindh was standing on a mountain of corruption. He criticised the Pakistan Peoples Party for not improving the condition of Sindh in spite of the fact that it had been ruling the province for the past 12 years. “The chief minister's press conferences are completely based on lies,” he said.

The PTI city chief was of the view that the federal government had not been interfering in the provincial affairs. Prime Minister Imran Khan has given the right to take decisions to all the provinces, he stated. “Punjab and Balochistan have made their own decisions,” he said, adding that in case of Sindh, its CM was himself hostile to its people. “The people of Sindh suffered irreparable losses due to the Sindh government’s anti-people decisions.”

“Today, the children of Sindh are dying of hunger and dog bites. Zeeshan of Larkana, our son of Sindh, died in agony. Seventy per cent of water in Sindh is not drinkable,” Zaman said.

Boasting of the performance of his party in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), he claimed that people from all over the world were flocking to KP where the poverty rate had come down. “Balochistan and Punjab are also moving forward but our province of Sindh is lagging behind because of corruption and bad governance.”

The PTI MPA also accused the provincial government of spreading hate among the people.

“Billions of rupees have been distributed among the needy people of Sindh under the Ehsaas emergency cash programme [of the federal government]. But the performance of the Sindh chief minister is questionable,” he said.

Reiterating the PTI’s support for the traders’ demand for reopening business activities, Zaman called for the Sindh government to formulate standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the markets across the province and allow the traders to resume their business activities.

He said the PTI had fulfilled its promises for Karachi and development work was still going on in various areas of the city. He asserted that the federal government was working in every possible way for the city.

Zaman declared that Imran Khan was the only leader of Sindh. He also asked Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar to clarify his position during the lockdown crisis and explain what he was doing.

PTI MNA Alamgir Khan said the biggest problem in Karachi at present was water shortage. “Water supply has been stopped in our constituencies on political grounds. Water is not flowing in the lines but the tanker mafia is active and selling water in our constituencies,” he alleged.

Criticising various departments of the Sindh government, Alamgir said the business of hydrants should be immediately stopped. He added that the Sindh government had failed to form SOPs and illegal constructions had started at various locations in the city,

MNAs Aftab Siddiqui, Aslam Khan, Fahim Khan, Akram Cheema, Aftab Jahangir and Saif-ur-Rehman, Sindh Assembly members Jamal Siddiqui and Shehzad Qureshi, and other PTI leaders, including Mahmood Maulvi and Imran Siddiqui, were also present at the press conference.