PPP sold land of Malir to builders, say PTI leaders

Announcing a campaign to save Malir, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders on Sunday said the party would not allow the provincial government to demolish the old villages of the area, and displace a large number of people and destroy farms for the construction of the Malir Expressway.

Addressing a press conference in connection with the upcoming by-poll in PS-88 Malir, PTI Central Vice President Haleem Adil Shaikh said his party was not against development but it would not allow the common man to be harmed in any way for the sake of development.

PTI Karachi President Khurrum Sher Zaman, candidate for PS-88 by-poll Jansher Junejo, former candidate Capt (retd) Rizwan Khan and other party leaders accompanied him. “When the Malir Expressway project was inaugurated, Pakistan Peoples Party’s leaders were happy but today after residents launched a campaign against the construction, they also started crying,” said Shaikh. “But Malir’s residents have realised that in the name of development, the PPP has been carrying out destruction in the area and therefore would reject them in the upcoming by-poll.”

The PTI leader accused the PPP of converting the fertile fields of Malir into barren land, calling the local PPP leaders as frontmen of the ‘Reti Bajri mafia’. Zaman asked local residents of Malir to vote for the PTI's candidate to save their area from mafias. He said the PPP’s provincial government in the past 13 years of its rule had sold the land of Malir to builders. “After people of three provinces completely rejected the PPP, now it is the turn of Sindh to reject them in upcoming polls and get rid of it,” he said.