KARACHI: As the Sindh government has reconstituted the apex committee, Governor Imran Ismail said on Friday that he was not aware whether the provincial government had dropped his name from the high-level body.

“Although I am in contact with the Sindh government but so far I have not been communicated formally about dropping my name from the apex committee,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the IDEAS defence exhibition here. “Why Sindh government is afraid of us?”

He said that despite differences on certain issues, “we want to go along with the Sindh government”.

He said that it would not augur well if he had been dropped from the apex committee.

Governor Sarwar has invited Karachi builders to Punjab

“What apprehension the Sindh government has with Governor House or the governor,” he asked and said such an attitude would widen the gap and impact measures of confidence building.

Governor was never part of apex committee: Sindh govt

When Dawn contacted Chief Minister House to know why the provincial government had dropped the Sindh governor from the apex committee, a spokesman for the CM said: “The Sindh governor has never been a member of the apex committee.”

He explained that former governor Dr Ishratul Ibad had participated in the meetings of the apex committee on special invitation. After his resignation, his successors, Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui and Mohammad Zubair, never attended any apex committee meeting because they were not members, he added.

He said no governor of any province was a member of the respective committees.

He said that a new notification had been issued because the new government had come into power and previous members who were made part of the committee by name/designation had been changed.

He said during the previous government then ministers Nisar Khuhro and Sharjeel Memon were by name/designation members of the apex committee. Now, they had been replaced with new members — Mukesh Kumar Chawla, Nasir Hussain Shah and Murtaza Wahab, he added.

A Nov 27 notification issued by the services, general administration and coordination department stated: “In suppression of the June 2016 notification, the apex committee of the province of Sindh has been reconstituted with the following composition and TORs to implement the National Action Plan and provincial action plan: chief minister as chairman while senior minister for works & services, minister for parliamentary affairs, adviser to CM on law & information, chief secretary, home secretary, commander V corps, director general of Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, inspector general of police, advocate general, Karachi commissioner, additional IGP of the Counter-Terrorism Department, chief of staff of V Corps, sector commander of the Inter-Services Intelligence, sector commander (202 Survey) and joint director general of the Intelligence Bureau.”

Punjab governor visits Quaid’s mausoleum

Punjab Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar has said that being the “elder brother” his province is prepared to make every sacrifice for smaller provinces.

However, he said that as far as distribution of resources was concerned the federal government allocated them in consultation with the chief ministers of the provinces.

He was talking to media after laying a wreath and offering fateha at the mausoleum of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah on Friday.

He said that the government would honour all its promises. He said the federal government would make every effort to solve the water problem of Sindh and would also solve the long-standing problems of Karachi with its own funds.

“God has given us the opportunity to serve the country by following the footsteps of Quaid-i-Azam. The people had pinned a lot of hopes [on] Prime Minister Imran Khan and may Allah guide him to come to their expectations”, he said.

Later, addressing the members of Association of Builders and Developers (Abad), he invited them to Punjab if they were facing hurdles in Karachi in obtaining no-objection certificates from any utility department.

He also offered them all facilities, including a one-window system for starting construction business.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2018