MQM-P set to stage march for Karachi residents’ rights today

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan is going to stage a big protest rally against the government of the Pakistan Peoples Party in Sindh today. The protest rally will start from the Expo Centre at Hassan Square and culminate at the Karachi Press Club.

The MQM-P had postponed the protest rally scheduled for June 15 in order to avoid confrontation with Sindhi nationalist parties, which also announced a protest demonstration in the city on the same day.

MQM-P leaders said on Friday that the rally would be the beginning of a struggle for the rights of Karachi. “All arrangements have been finalised in connection with the march,” said the party’s spokesperson.

Besides holding the protest, he said, the MQM-P would also unveil its strategy to give a tough time to the Sindh government over its failure to end discrimination in government jobs and depriving the youth of urban Sindh of employment on the basis of fake domiciles and PRCs, and seizure of resources. It would highlight other civic issues the city’s residents had been facing for the past 13 years, he said.

JI to hold protest

On the appeal of Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI) central emir Sirajul Haq, the party’s Karachi chapter has announced holding a protest demonstration against rising inflation and unemployment in the city on Sunday afternoon.

The protest will be held on New MA Jinnah Road where JI Karachi chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman and other leaders will speak to a crowd. The decision to hold the demonstration was made in a meeting of district heads of the party on Friday.

The participants of the meeting also reviewed the Karachi Rights Movement and termed the public response to the drive as a symbol of trust by the metropolis’s residents in the JI. They vowed to continue and augment the campaign.

Addressing the meeting, Rehman said the rights movement was aimed at ending the quota system, ensuring the due share in jobs for the youth of Karachi, resolving the issue of fake domiciles, installing an empowered local government and allocating of 15 per cent of the revenue collected from Karachi for the city.