Sindh Information and Labour Minister has said the protest banners displayed by Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in Karachi show that it is attempting to spread ethnic divide in the city and rest of the province as that is completely unacceptable to them.
The Sindh Information and Labour Minister expressed the opinion to this effect on Saturday while talking to media persons as he came to the Karachi Press Club to meet and greet its newly elected office-bearers and members of the governing body.
Saeed Ghani said on the occasion that the way agitational politics was being done by JI on the issue of newly passed Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Law-2021 on ethnic grounds showed that the party had the desire to replace Muttahida Quami Movement Movement in Karachi as such an attempt was objectionable.
He, however, clarified that they had no objection whatsoever against the JI’s protest sit-in continuing outside the Sindh Assembly building as all the concerned political parties had the democratic right to stage processions and rallies on such issues.
He said the Chairman of Pakistan People’s Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, and he himself had said repeatedly that a law passed by the assembly should be considered as a holy scripture as it was always open to improvements and amendments. “We in the past held negotiations with the Jamaat-e-Islami as we are ready to do the same again in order to persuade them,” he said.
He said the political parties that had sided with the dictators in the past had always a bleak future insight. “Everybody knows as to how Abdul Sattar Afghani became mayor and Naimatullah Khan became Nazim of Karachi,” he said.
He reiterated the stance of the Sindh government that the passage of a new local government amendment bill didn’t mean that a new local government law had been enacted in Sindh. He said the new amendment bill had been passed in order to improve the Sindh Local Government Act-2013 to further the process of devolution of powers to the grassroots level.
The Sindh Information Minister said that Karachi’s mayor would chair the new city-wide solid waste management agency to be established by the Sindh government while the mayor would be the co-chair of Karachi Water & Sewerage Board. He said the elected local government representatives in the new set-up would get access to the affairs of 10 different provincial government’s departments.
He made it clear that Article 140-A of the Constitution of Pakistan called for devolving political, administrative, and financial powers to the local government as the same authority was available to the municipal agencies of Sindh.
The Sindh Information Minister that a criminal case should be lodged against the Murree’s government, Punjab Government, and relevant federal ministers as no ban was timely imposed when hundreds of thousands of people travelled towards the tourist spot whose roads didn’t have the capacity to handle more than 5,000 vehicles at a time.
He said the criminal case should be lodged against those federal ministers who had held out the flawed view that a large influx of tourists going to the hill stations showed improvement in the national economic conditions.
He said the criminal negligence had shown by the relevant authorities and administration that had resulted in the tragic deaths of 21 intending tourists.
He opined that Prime Minister Imran Khan should step down after startling disclosures related to the recent probe into foreign funding case, as financial irregularities to the tune of billions of rupees had been committed to receiving funds for the ruling party.
He said that Imran Khan should resign as the PM as otherwise, he would influence the further investigation into the case.
