PPP, MWM ask opposition parties to hold talks to resolve LG law dispute

Leaders of the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM) have called upon Sindh’s opposition political parties to sit with the provincial government to hold talks for an amicable resolution of the controversy related to the local government system instead of agitating merely for the sake of political point-scoring.

They put forth this piece of advice while jointly addressing a press conference on Friday after holding talks mainly on the contentious issue of the recently passed local government law and other issues of public interest.

The PPP and MWM leaders said the government was always ready to listen to and consider the reservations of different parties about the system of municipal governance, but in no way would the demand for reviving the Local Government Ordinance of 2001 belonging to the dictatorial regime of Pervez Musharraf be accepted.

Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani, who took part in the talks on behalf of the ruling PPP, expressed gratitude to the MWM leadership for providing them with an opportunity of consultation on the issue. He said the PPP had intended to attend the all parties’ conference earlier convened by the MWM, but it couldn’t do so owing to its certain preoccupations.

Ghani said a detailed discussion had been held with the MWM leadership on the issue of municipal governance, and the PPP had agreed to a large extent to the points raised by the MWM to improve the local government system in Sindh.

He told media persons that the PPP government had been working to resolve issues being faced by the residents of Karachi. However, he conceded that still much work was needed to be done to resolve the issues of the city and the rest of the province.

The information minister was of the view that the agitation drive launched by certain political parties was meant to raise their political stature and to divert the attention of the people from genuine public issues.

He said the government had recently amended the Sindh Local Government Act 2013 to accelerate the process of devolution of powers to the grassroots level. He said the revival of the Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2001 pertaining to the past dictatorial regime in the country was not possible at any cost.

Ghani advised the protesting parties to use the forum of the Sindh Assembly to put forth their suggestions to improve the local government law instead of doing agitation on the roads of Karachi.

To a question, he recalled that the late Abdul Sattar Afghani had become mayor of Karachi under the local government system of 1979 during the then military regime of General Ziaul Haq. He said the local government system of 1979, apart from a few amendments, had been mainly derived from the regime of municipal governance introduced by PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1972, but the local government polls couldn’t be held in the country during Bhutto’s rule.

Speaking on the occasion, MWM leader Ali Hussain Naqvi said the development and progress of Karachi simply meant the development and progress of the entire country.

He said they believed that the PPP had been moving ahead with the honesty of purpose to cordially resolve the issues concerning the local government system. He said the MWM had also been given an assurance by the government that it would consider all practical and positive suggestions for improving the local government law to safeguard legitimate public interests.

Regarding the sit-in that the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) had been staging outside the Sindh Assembly for the past 20 days, the MWM leader said they had urged the government to hold talks with the JI leadership on the municipal system, keeping in view their prolonged agitation in which women supporters of the party had also participated.