CJP, ECP asked to take notice of Wahab serving as KMC head

An opposition legislator in the Sindh Assembly on Friday expressed dismay over the fact that a politician associated with the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had been continuing as the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) administrator when local government elections were going to be held in the city after a few weeks.

The continuation of Murtaza Wahab, a PPP leader and spokesperson for the Sindh government, as the KMC administrator came under discussion as the Sindh Assembly continued with its general discussion on the proposed provincial budget for the upcoming financial year 2022-23 for a fifth day.

Opposition legislator of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Khurrum Sher Zaman said the chief justice of Pakistan and Election Commission of Pakistan should take congnisance of the situation that a person with an obvious political affiliation had been continuing as the Karachi administrator days before the upcoming municipal polls in the city.

He recalled that previous mayors of Karachi had kept on complaining that they did not have powers and remarked that the next Karachi mayor would be making the same complaints after the local government elections.

Zaman berated the PPP for not ensuring the facility of potable water for Karachi despite ruling the province for 14 years. He lamented that up to 75 per cent population of Karachi had to rely on the water tanker service to fulfil their daily household needs. The PTI lawmaker said the Sindh government should improve the working of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board or else the city’s water utility should be handed over to the Sindh Rangers.

He claimed that some 31,000 government-run schools in Sindh had been functioning without electricity. The PPP-led Sindh government even failed to develop Larkana and Sehwan Sharif that were the native cities of PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah respectively, Zaman added. The lone opposition lawmaker belonging to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, Syed Abdul Rasheed of the Jamaat-e-Islami, remarked that merely Rs10 billion had been reserved in the proposed budget for the development of Karachi and this was sheer injustice.

He said the new budget contained 10 development schemes for the youth and women while there were 52 schemes for the Auqaf Department. The Sindh government should give due attention to the important sections of society, he added.

He said the people of Karachi had been suffering due to acute water shortage for the past 17 years. He also demanded that the trauma centre at the Lyari General Hospital be revived. Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho said the Sindh government had been working in the health sector day in, day out. She said Rs500 million had been reserved for the infectious diseases hospital in Karachi. The vital purchases of equipment by the provincial health department had been delayed due to an increase in the exchange rate of US dollar, she added.

PTI MPA Dr Imran Ali Shah said the Sindh government had failed to stop the continuous discharge of untreated solid waste into the sea. Not a single street or neighbourhood existed in the province where the situation of waste disposal and sanitation was exemplary, he said. Nand Kumar of the Grand Democratic Alliance said the Sindh government had so far failed to establish a commission for the welfare of the religious minorities.