‘Sindh govt punishing Karachiites for not voting for PPP’

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Sindh leaders on Sunday blamed the Sindh government for the delay in the completion of the K-IV bulk water supply project, alleging that the provincial government did not want to complete the project because it wanted to deprive the Karachi residents of water as a punishment for not voting for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

Addressing a press conference at the Insaf House on Sunday, the PTI’s parliamentary party leader in the Sindh Assembly, Haleem Adil Sheikh, said the PPP had made Karachi a landfill site.

“Karachiites are being punished for not giving vote to the PPP in the general and local government polls but we will not let them to do it,” said Sheikh, who is also the PTI’s central vice-president.

He added that the PPP’s bad governance had also not spared Larkana despite the fact that the people of Larkana had voted for it. He criticised the Sindh chief minister for his claim that the prime minister had stopped the K-IV project. “The fact is that the PPP’s Sindh government is behind the delay in this project,” Sheikh said and accused the provincial government of corruption in the project. “The K-IV could have easily been completed in Rs75 billion but it is still left incomplete.”

The PTI leader went on to say that Karachi resembled Karbala due to water shortage as most of its residents could not find drinking water. “In four months, the Sindh government has not approved the K-IV project from the cabinet, which is a shame.”

Sheikh said that apart from Karachi, the PPP government had ruined Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur, Larkana and other cities and towns. Reacting to the Sindh government’s demand that the federal government pay it all the money that the former had spent on three major hospitals in Karachi if the latter wanted to take over them, the PTI leader said that the hospitals — the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and National Institute of Child Health — had been under the federal government since their inception and the federal government had never asked the Sindh government to pay their expenditures of the past 50 years. “Now, the Sindh health minister asks that the federal government should return the amount the provincial government had spent on these hospitals.”

He asked if the provincial government had spent money on these hospitals from the personal accounts of Zardari or Omni Group. He commented that it was public money that had been spent on public service institutions.

He maintained that the Sindh government had rather burdened the NICVD with loans of Rs16 billion. Sheikh said that in the new Sindh budget, nothing had been tagged for any mega scheme in Karachi and his party rejected that anti-people budget. “Rs100 billion are tagged for the non-developmental sector, and this money is tagged for corruption of rulers.”

He added that the expenditures for the CM House and the helicopter travel of the CM had been increased in the budget. During its 12-year long rule, the Sindh government had not given a single public transport bus to the megacity of Karachi and nor did it give a single water supply scheme, the PTI leader claimed. “Karachi collects 95 per cent of revenue and in return, it is given nothing,” he lamented

He alleged that the Sindh government was involved in corruption in the hospital funds. He said Rs350 million was paid for salaries of the NICVD staff and the salary of Nadeem Qamar, who is the brother of the PPP’s central leader Naveed Qamar, alone was Rs6.5 million a month.

Shaikh maintained that all the people living in Sindh were Sindhi and the PPP had no right

to give them residential certificates. “The rulers have given Sindh AIDS,” he said, adding that the PPP did not even spare the funds for culture and archaeology from embezzlement.

He said the provincial ministers talking about the plane crash were silent on what action was taken against those responsible for the building collapse deaths in Karachi. The fake licenses were given to Pakistan International Airlines’ pilots in the period of the PPP’s federal government, he claimed.

The PTI leader said the federal government had given schemes worth Rs1,200 billion to Karachi and 90 schemes for Sindh had been included in the federal government’s annual development programme.