JI demands end to injustices with city

Demanding from the federal government to revoke the ban on the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Karachi chapter said on Saturday the Ummah would not tolerate any compromise on the honour of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him).

JI Karachi chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman made this demand while addressing a convention held in connection with the Karachi Rights Movement.

Shedding light on the significance of the city’s role in the country’s economy and highlighting the grievances of the megalopolis, he urged the Karachi residents to take the ruling parties to task for the sake of the future of the country’s “economic nerve”.

“The city runs Pakistan, but unfortunately it is neglected, and discrimination against the city prevails in the establishment, bureaucracy and political circles,” he said, adding that everyone was making use of the resources of the city, but no one intended to pay back to the city.

“We demand an end to the fraud and deception towards Karachi,” he said after elaborating how the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) had backstabbed the city in the last census.

Talking about the current scenario, he said the government had not spent even Rs2 billion during the last several months under the Karachi Transformation Plan.

“The PPP government needs to take Karachi as part of Sindh and the federal government of the PTI needs to realise that Karachi is a part of Pakistan.”

The JI leader also highlighted the government’s dual standard when it came to uprooting people in slum areas of Karachi for development work, saying the authorities used ruthless force to displace people but spared those responsible for their dwelling in those areas.

He said the political forces of the past kept the city divided on ethnic grounds, while it was the JI that took up the issue of computerised national identity cards for migrants with the authorities. “The city is an inhabitant of migrants [Mohajirs], those who migrated for the ideology of Pakistan, but, unfortunately, those who claimed to represent them did nothing for the people .”