HYDERABAD: Qaumi Awami Tehreek (QAT) leader Ayaz Latif Palijo has said the present leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is not sincere with the people of Sindh but keen only to plunder resources of the province.

Speaking to participants in the party’s ‘Mohabbat-i-Sindh Bedari March’ at Khathar, Seri, 9-Mile, Kapor Mori, Jara Wah, Dita Wah, Bulri Shah Karim and others areas in Hyderabad and Tando Moham­mad Khan on Thursday night and Friday, he said Sindh had been turned into a haven for corrupt, greedy and anti-social elements.

He severely criticised the top PPP leadership for not having pursued the assassination case of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, saying that those who minted money in the name of Ms Bhutto forgot her killers. That’s way, the killers could not be arrested till date, he said.

Mr Palijo said that not a single PPP lawmaker led a protest demonstration against the killers when the party was in power nor did they raise their voice against the state agencies’ inaction with regard to exposing the culprits.

He alleged that PPP co-chairman and former president of the country Asif Ali Zardari bought 17 sugar mills and was now earning billions of rupees by getting the sugar cane prices reduced in connivance with other millers.

“The masses in Sindh are living in abject poverty while PPP leaders and activists are busy plundering resources of the province,” he alleged.

Mr Palijo also castigated the PPP lawmakers elected with the support of minorities for not pleading the cases of alleged kidnapping and forced conversion of Hindu girls.

“They [the lawmakers] never observed a one-day hunger strike nor did they file a single case in a court of law in this regard,” he said.

The PPP lawmakers from minority communities appeared interested only in making money and getting liquor shops licences, he said.

The QAT leader warned his supporters of a conspiracy being hatched to pit the Sindhi- and Urdu-speaking people in the province against each other. He said both the communities had been living in the province peacefully but hate politics had now been resorted to under the conspiracy to undermine the harmony.

He appealed to the prime minister, chief justice of Pakistan and chief of the army staff to take serious notice of rampant corruption, injustices and inflation imposed on the people of Sindh before the masses chose to take to the street to get rid of all such evils.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2014