‘Students of schools being used as shelters to be treated fairly in exams’

Acknowledging that a number of schools in Sindh have not been functioning because of being used as makeshift shelters for the flood victims, Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon has said the provincial government will ensure that students of such schools do not face any injustice in the upcoming board examinations.

Addressing a news conference on Wednesday, Memon said the last meeting of the provincial cabinet discussed this issue and asked the education minister to prepare a policy to protect the legitimate academic interests of the public schools where teaching has stopped due to the flood relief drive.

The information minister said the Sindh government will continue its relief activities until all the displaced flood victims are rehabilitated back in their native areas in accordance with the clear-cut directives of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Asif Ali Zardari.

He told the media that the Sindh government has established 2,925 relief camps in different parts of the province where 673,353 displaced flood victims have been housed. He said rains and floods have flattened around 71,994,000 homes in different calamity-hit parts of Sindh.

He also said the flood emergency has rendered some 724,866,000 people homeless across the province. He informed the media that rains and floods have killed 707 people and injured 8,422 others in different calamity-hit areas of the province.

Memon said the flood emergency has also taken the lives of 290,197 domesticated animals in the province. He informed the media that the Sindh government has handed over 275,000 tents to provide temporary shelter to the homeless flood victims.

Imran’s map

Replying to a question, the minister said that the map of Pakistan available with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan does not show Sindh and Balochistan as parts of the country.

“Imran Khan thinks that Pakistan is comprised of only those areas of the country where the PTI is in power, while the other parts where the PTI is not in power are not part of Pakistan. This is the Pakistan where Imran Khan has been trying to work.”

Memon said the PTI had conducted a false campaign and telethons to collect donations in the name of helping the flood victims in the country. He said the PTI’s flood relief drive was only meant to impress people.

He claimed that the PTI had failed to collect donations for the flood victims according to the party’s tall claims. “Imran Khan has announced that he would deposit whatever donations the PTI has been receiving into the accounts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s chief ministers. This shows that Imran Khan doesn’t consider Sindh’s people humans.”

The information minister said Khan is used to being engaged in anti-Sindh politics. He said the PTI chief had not built a single road in Sindh out of the federal development funds during his tenure as prime minister. Khan never spent a single night in Sindh while he was PM, he added. Memon said Khan’s politics is based on hypocrisy because he does not feel the suffering of the people of the country.

He said the PTI chief is always ready to cross any limit to regain power. The minister said the PTI does not have any real strength of the people because the party owes its existence only to social media. “On the one hand people have been drowning, while on the other, the PTI has been using containers for musical concerts.”

He claimed that Khan has emerged as a security risk for the country and its institutions. He appealed to the chief justice of Pakistan to take note of the misdeeds of the ousted premier. The information minister made it clear that the PPP does not want confrontation with any political party. He explained that the PTI would run away anyway if such a clash were to ever take place.