Sindh’s law and order to be compromised if seven senior cops transferred: Ghani

The law and order situation of the province will be compromised if the federal government is allowed to unilaterally withdraw seven senior police officials posted in Sindh.

Sindh Information Minister Saeed Ghani said this on Wednesday while talking to media persons at the Sindh Assembly. He said the proposal to transfer seven senior officials of the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) was not acceptable to the provincial government as the maintenance of the law and order situation was fully its responsibility.

He reiterated the demand of the Sindh government that the Centre should immediately withdraw its order to transfer seven senior police officials of the province as the same request was also contained in the letter sent by the Sindh chief minister to the prime minister.

He recalled the statement of the CM that the establishment division in Islamabad should not bother senior police officers posted in the province on account of the row between the federal and provincial governments.

Ghani told media persons that Sindh had 26 posts of grade-20 police officials as against them 22 PSP officers had been working in the province. He said the Centre had transferred eight police officials to the province but the province would accept four of them and the other four would be repatriated to Islamabad keeping in view the vacant positions in the province.

He said that similarly Sindh still faced a shortage of 44 officers of the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) despite the fact that the federal government had sent four more PAS officials. He lamented the situation that the incumbent federal government was not ready to talk to or hold consultation with the Sindh CM who was the chief executive of one of the provinces of Pakistan.

The federal government should consult with the Sindh CM on such contentious administrative issues as he was not the chief minister of any province of Israel or India, the Sindh information minister remarked.

He said such an attitude of the Centre was tantamount to penalising the people of Sindh as they had chosen the Pakistan Peoples Party to rule in the province in the last general elections.

To a question, Ghani said the government was bound to act upon the directives of the honourable judiciary. “But personally, I would prefer to leave my post and join my people in case I was asked to act upon any such judgment whose implementation would result in any human catastrophe or rendering people homeless,” he remarked.

To another question, he said the federal cabinet had the other day raised a baseless point that 1.6 million tons of wheat was stolen from Sindh. Ghani said he was surprised to know that a handout was also issued after a meeting of the federal cabinet with a demand to the Sindh government that it inquire into the issue.

He added that the claim of theft of 1.6 million tons of wheat from Sindh had no basis at all when the Sindh government’s total wheat procurement in a year stood at 1.2 million tons. The information minister was of the view that Punjab should not face wheat shortage as it produced 70 per cent of the total harvest of the essential food commodity in the country but such a shortage did take place just one month after the wheat cultivation in the province.

Ghani lamented that opposition political parties in the Sindh Assembly had opposed a resolution in the house for protection of several housing projects in the province so that their residents were not rendered homeless.

Answering a query, he said the Muttahida Qaumi Movement had been involved in land grabbing in the past to illegally occupy amenity land in the province He said the Sindh government would adopt necessary amendments in the provincial local government law before December 1 to ensure that the Election Commission of Pakistan was able to conduct municipal elections in the province.