Participants of a family walk on Sunday in the North Nazimabad area of Karachi under the aegis of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) vowed to convert their North Nazimabad Restoration Movement into the Karachi Restoration Movement.
The walk was led by JI Karachi chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman. A large number of residents of the area, including women and children, representatives of traders’ bodies and civil society activists participated in the walk from the Hyderi Market to KDA Chowrangi.
Addressing the participants, Rehman shed light on the history of North Nazimabad, which was once considered one of the most livable areas of the city having all the necessary civic facilities. The JI leader explained how the once exemplary area was gradually ruined.
He claimed that former mayor, the late Niamatullah Khan of the JI, had resolved almost all the issues of the town within just two years. The JI leader said Khan was forcefully kept away from becoming the mayor of the city for the second time through an NRO by then dictator Pervez Musharraf, after which the Muttahida Qaumi Movement got the city’s mayorship.
He said that since 2005, the entire city in general and North Nazimabad in particular were pushed in a downward spiral. As a result, the once clean and green North Nazimabad now wore a deserted look, he added. He also held the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf responsible for the situation in the city.
The JI city chief alleged that the PPP had unmasked its feudal mindset by appointing a party member as the administrator of the city just to plunder its resources. He went on to allege that during the 13-year-rule of the PPP in Sindh, millions of rupees were allocated but not spent on Karachi.
The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation provided no services to the citizens of Karachi but the ruling regime wanted municipal taxes to be collected forcefully with utility bills of the ‘infamous’ K-Electric and natural gas, he said.
He recalled that the metro bus project in Lahore was completed in 11 months as he lamented that the Green Line bus project in Karachi had been lingering on for over three years. Rehman demanded a forensic audit of the Green Line project to uncover facts about the billions of rupees shown as expenditure on the project.
Lambasting the ruling regime in the Centre, he said the prime minister had inaugurated the circular railway project in Karachi one-and-a-half years ago but he was to again visit Karachi to again inaugurate an already-inaugurated project.
The prime minister announced packages worth billions of rupees for Karachi but no action was taken on ground to change the situation, he said. The JI leader remarked that the JI was the genuine representative of the city as he demanded an audit of the Rs1,100 billion package.
