Sindh govt wants to take over remaining KMC depts, warns Akhtar

Karachi mayor and senior Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Wasim Akhtar has lamented how the provincial government is further depriving the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) of its powers.

Akhtar, along with an MQM-P former District Municipal Corporation (DMC) chairman, told a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Friday that for the past 13 years, all municipalities had been under the control of the Sindh government.

He said the Pakistan Peoples Party’s KMC administrator, Murtuza Wahab, had also completed one month in office, but there has not been any improvement on ground. The provincial government, he said, was ready to take away more powers of the metropolitan corporation. “In a span of a few days, the leftover departments will be under the Sindh government,” he warned.

In their tenure of four years, Akhtar claimed, the MQM-P completed various development projects, which included the construction of roads and parks across the city. As for the National Finance Commission Award, he said the chief minister of Sindh kept all its funds and release them at his own discretion. The former KMC mayor pointed out that the people of Karachi refrained from paying taxes to the KMC because they were deprived of very basic necessities. “The provincial government wants to impose new taxes on the people of Karachi by force and deprive them of electricity as well,” he said.

Administrator Murtuza Wahab, he said, should not support the imposition of new taxes on the people of Karachi; rather, he should help in empowering the metropolitan corporation. As per the law, he said, whatever tax the provincial government collected from the people of the city it had to spend its certain percentage on the city’s development.

The newly appointed administrator, he said, rather than resolving the issues, was bent on making Boat Basin a food street. He pointed out that University Road and Tariq Road constructed by the provincial government were in a very bad shape currently.

After getting hold of Karachi’s hospitals, he said, the Sindh government was planning to get the administrative control of the city’s graveyards. Before capturing more departments of the KMC, the MQM-P leader said, the provincial government should answer if their control over the Sindh Building Control Authority, the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board and the Malir Development Authority was successful or not.