SUKKUR: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Sunday declared the opposition ‘ignorant’ and said that the PPP is a major political force in the country, while the opposition was numerically in minority.
Talking to the media in Larkana after visiting Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, he ruled out that Karachi’s decisions are being made in Larkana. He claimed that he did not believe in ethnicity. Taking a dig at former MQM chief Altaf Hussain, he said the fomenter of ethnicity was in London these days.
He said that he only used the word ‘minority’ for the opposition, not non-Muslim, but they exploited it. He further said the opposition is involved in applauding the corrupt people. He said he belonged to Sehwan and was elected from there but represented the whole province. “I am not the chief minister of Sehwan but the whole of Sindh."
He said the federal government claimed that the Sindh government did nothing, so they were going to fix the problems, however, it is not the domain of the Centre to do so. The Sindh CM said that if they uttered anything, they were being criticised. “We have no need of the federal government, because it created a tsunami of inflation,” he added. He said the inept government of PTI was targeting the Sindh government.
He said that all the political stakeholders were taken on board and then they brought the Local Bodies Act in the Sindh Assembly, following which, he said, the assembly passed the bill and sent it to the governor.
He said that the stakeholders from the opposition met the governor, where they raised their concerns. After the governor’s observation, he had sent it back, he said, adding that after addressing 99 percent observations of the governor, we had again sent the bill to him.
He said only one observation of the governor, in which he proposed direct election of the chairman of District Council, mayors of Town and Municipal committees and Metropolitan was not addressed as it was not feasible. He said the governor’s post was constitutional, not political.
He said that rejecting the bill by the opposition was beyond his understanding. “We had discussed it for nine months with the opposition,” he added. He claimed that the health and education affairs were delegated to the local councils.
He said that they will announce a plan against the inflation on December 27. He said that the 14th death anniversary of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto would be marked and in this regard he had reached Larkana to finalise the arrangements.
He said that the death anniversary would be observed by strictly following the Covid-19 SOPs, in which wearing of masks, maintaining social distancing and using hand sanitizers would be compulsory for the attendees.
