Sindh’s biased govt extorting Karachi’s traders in name of lockdown, alleges Kamal

By our correspondent

Pak Sarzameen Party Chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal on Wednesday alleged that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led federal government had given the Pakistan Peoples Party an NOC to continue a system of oppression, hatred and bigotry in Sindh merely to prolong its survival in the Centre.

Addressing a press conference at the Pakistan House, he said that despite winning a majority of the seats from Karachi, the PTI had sold out Karachi, the country’s economic lifeline, to the PPP.

“During the PPP’s 15-year rule in urban Sindh, the PPP has failed to not only provide an extra single drop of water but also has snatched the available water from the city residents,” he said.

Kamal said Karachi had been deprived of the remaining right to government jobs and education through fake domiciles. “Not a single bus has so for been introduced by the provincial government for the metropolis,” he said.

He alleged that the PPP’s brutalities had reached their peak in urban Sindh. “The PPP’s biased provincial government has immensely disturbed the business community of urban Sindh by imposing lockdowns to mint money through police and other departments in the guise of implementing Covid SOPs,.”

The PSP chief said that in the name of the lockdown, the government officials had been abusing and extorting traders, and the police had been picking them up, locking them up and releasing them after minting millions of rupees in extortion.

He also asked the leaders of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazal and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz not to beg the PPP to include it in the Pakistan Democratic Movement, and alleged that the hands of the ruling party in Sindh had been stained with the blood of innocent youths.

Criticising its arch-rival -- Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan -- Kamal said that it was and had been involved in every conspiracy of the PPP’s government. “Those who shed crocodile’s tears over the quota system, and he unavailability of powers and resources, themselves gave power and resources to the PPP with their own hands. Ishratul Ebad was the governor of the province at that time and the MQM had eight provincial ministers in the Sindh Assembly,” he said.

He said the PTI-led federal government had exposed its enmity to Karachi by approving the “controversial census” of 2017, and the MQM-P had stabbed the city’s residents in the back by remaining silent over the census issue for a few ministries.

PSP leaders Anis Kaim Khani, Syed Hafeezuddin, Shabbir Qaim Khani and Dr Arshad Abdullah Vohra accompanied Kamal.