‘Law enforcers, district officials making money through bribes during lockdown’

Dr Farooq Sattar, the disgruntled leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) heading his own faction of the party named MQM Organisation Restoration Committee, on Sunday alleged that on the pretext of implementation of Covid-19 standard operating procedures (SOP), Karachi had been turned into an extortion haven for law enforcers and district administration officials who were collecting bribes in exchange for allowing SOP violations.

Addressing a press conference along with leaders of the business community, Dr Sattar lashed out at the Karachi police and district administration for harassing traders by first sealing their shops and then demanding heavy bribes against unsealing them. “After 6pm on a daily basis, harassment of traders begins,” he said and warned that traders would hold sit-ins on roads after 6pm against the Sindh government's harassment.

He said people of Karachi would take ‘direct action’ if the police’s attitude towards them was not changed. “After the elimination of extortion from the city, now the Sindh government has been collecting extortion money from traders of the city,” he added.

Dr Sattar alleged that a conspiracy had been hatched up against small business in Karachi. Firstly, roads and infrastructure of Karachi were destroyed and then efforts were made to snatch employment opportunities from the city’s youth through fake domiciles

and the quota system, he remarked. “Now their target is to destroy the trade and business activities in the city.”

He demanded that those having domiciles of other districts be not given jobs in Karachi and Hyderabad on the urban quota. He clarified that his remarked should not be construed as anti-Sindhis. “We are not talking against Sindhi brothers and sisters. We are against this quota system,” he said.

Dr Sattar stated that residents of Karachi were being forced to commit crimes. He demanded of the chief justice of Pakistan to take notice of the conspiracy of inciting ethnic hatred by the provincial government’s biased moves, and set up a commission to audit the provincial funds of the past 13 years.