Govt not going to give military bases to US: Fawad

KARACHI: Federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry has said that the government is not going to hand over the military bases in the country to the United States (US).

Talking to media persons here on Saturday, Fawad Chaudhry said that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto had developed Pakistan People’s Party into a national-level party but later on Asif Ali Zardari had relegated the PPP to the level of a nationalist party. He said the PPP had become the political party of only interior Sindh.

He said that the Karachi’s economy would have been lot better, had Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf been in power in Sindh. He said that the manner the latest federal budget had been welcomed by masses was unprecedented in the history of the country. He advised the Sindh government to spend money on the welfare of the people of the province.

He said the deployment of Rangers in Sindh had been continuing since 1990 as the Sindh government had failed to raise a proper police force in the province.

He said that empowered local governments were the need of the hour in Sindh. The Article 140-A of the Constitution is not being implemented in this regard. There is a need to directly spend public money on the people of Karachi. “The development of Karachi couldn’t take place till such time we continued to rely on Murad Ali Shah and company,” said the federal minister.

Such people have been in power in Karachi who possessed backward thinking, he said. He said the provincial authority in Sindh had been unable to spend the federal money as the next mayor of Karachi should receive direct funding from the federation.

He said the country’s economy had improved as the provinces had got 23 percent share in Rs900 billion development package.

He hoped that the Sindh government would this time judicially spend the funds it had received from the centre. He said that Sindh government had received thousands of billions of rupees from the centre but their expenditure was seen nowhere in the province. He said that the provincial finance award was never announced in the province. He said that even the contractors working in Karachi had been facing hard time. He said that even tap water was unavailable in Karachi.