PSP sit-in continues on fourth day as talks with Sindh govt enter fifth round

KARACHI: The Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) on Wednesday continued its sit-in on the fourth consecutive day at Fawara Chowk on Wednesday when a delegation of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl leaders also visited the protest to express solidarity with the PSP.

The PSP also held the fifth round of talks with the Sindh government over the disputed local government law that continued till late night. A delegation of the Sindh government led by Local Government Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah arrived at the sit-in to hold talks with PSP Chairman Mustafa Kamal and his team.

Earlier, addressing the participants of the sit-in, the PSP chief said the Supreme Court’s verdict for the devolution of powers to the local governments included all the points presented by his party for the empowerment of the local bodies.

“The petitioners’ concerns are not mentioned anywhere in the verdict but there is a detailed mention of the Provincial Financial Commission [PFC] award which the PSP has been demanding since its inception,” said Kamal as he tried to discredit the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan, the main petitioner in the case, without naming it.

Vowing to continue the struggle for an empowered local government system, the PSP chief said the most important point of the PSP’s local bodies draft law was the formula by which financial resources received by the provinces under the National Finance Commission would be transferred to the grassroots level through the PFC. “Without the implementation of this mechanism, the authority of the LG departments is meaningless,” he added.

He stated that Sindh got Rs1,200 billion annually from the federation but there was no provision of good education, gas, drinking water, and medicine.A JUI-F delegation led by provincial deputy head Maulana Abdul Karim Abid visited the sit-in to show solidarity with the PSP and said that the JUI-F supported demands of the PSP for empowered local governments in the province.