PTI announces mass campaign to get rid of Sindh government

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has decided to launch a campaign titled ‘Eliminate Corruption – Save Sindh’ to get rid of the ‘corrupt’ Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) government in the province.

The announcement of the campaign was made by the leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly, PTI’s Haleem Adil Sheikh, in a party workers convention held in the Gulshan-e-Hadeed neighbourhood on Saturday.

PTI MNA Ataullah Khan, leader Mir Arsalan Brohi and others also spoke at the event where a large number of political workers and local leaders belonging to the PPP and other political parties announced their decision to join the PTI.

Sheikh, who is also the PTI’s central vice-president, remarked that the PPP had ransacked District Malir by corruption of billions of rupees, and destroyed the education, health, and other sectors in the district. He alleged that instead of doing something for their voters, elected representatives of the PPP from Malir were selling villages and jobs.

“The PTI will field candidates in the upcoming general and local bodies’ elections from each constituency of Malir,” Sheikh maintained as he vowed to get Malir free from the clutches of the mafia.

Defending the federal government against criticism of flawed economic policies, the PTI leader said the Covid-19 pandemic had disrupted the global economy and the entire world was facing high inflationary pressures with strong economies like those of the United States and Germany experiencing the highest ever inflation in their history.

“Prime Minister Imran Khan dealt with the crisis efficiently without completely shutting down the economic activities so that low-income groups and daily wage earners could survive the harsh implications of the crisis,” he said, adding that the Ehsaas emergency cash assistance was provided to over 26 million deserving people of the country to help them during the pandemic.

Sheikh was of the view that the PTI was capable of steering the nation out of the post-Covid crisis as well. He informed the event that the federal government had been working on the provision of targeted subsidies on essential items of daily use to low-income groups.

He said Pakistan depended heavily on the import of petroleum products and international prices affected the local rates but the federal government did not pass on the entire burden to the consumers and significantly reduced taxes and duties to provide maximum relief to the public.

“On the other hand, wheat is produced locally but the rate of wheat flour in Sindh is 20 rupees higher than Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa,” he claimed.

Adding to his criticism of the Sindh government, he said the provincial cabinet had recently been informed that 1.6 million tons of wheat worth billions of rupees had gone missing from warehouses of the food department.

“Rats of the Sindh cabinet had eaten billions of rupees but the CM did not take any action because he himself and his leader Bilawal Zardari were involved in the corruption,” Sheikh alleged. “The PPP not only stole wheat but also sugar, water, vaccines of Covid-19 and medicines including that of HIV/AIDS that was rapidly spreading in the province,” he added.

The Sindh Assembly opposition leader said there had been vast scale corruption in education, health, irrigation and other departments of the Sindh government while schools, hospitals, roads and other public facilities in the province were in a dilapidated state. “All the rural and urban areas of Sindh are depicting scenes of ruins,” he asserted.

The PPP had become a party of anti-masses mafias and a security risk for Pakistan, Sheikh said as he announced the PTI’s decision to start a province-wide campaign for the removal of the provincial government.

He said the PTI was a party with pro-people ideology and its leader Imran Khan was not a hereditary politician.

“The PTI is a party that challenged the status quo and was sailing against the winds so only sincere and ideological workers could sustain here,” Sheikh said, adding that there was no room in the PTI for people who wanted to serve their own interests.