KARACHI: City Mayor Wasim Akhtar said on Wednesday that political governments did not conduct local government elections because they never recognised local bodies’ institutions due to their ‘feudal’ mentality.

“The last elections were held on the orders of the Supreme Court,” he said and added that the powers of the third tier of government were withheld by the provincial government.

The mayor was talking to a delegation of trainee officers of the Civil Services Academy headed by CSA director Asim Iqbal.

He said that those who held higher posts in the country could create unity through their decisions for Karachi. “This would help the country to get strengthened also,” he added.

The mayor, who is also a central leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), said that his party did not agree with the national census and went to court against the results of the population count.

“How could the city’s population be so less if Nadra record showed it as over 25 million?” he asked and added that the census results were “wrong”, which is why the MQM-P did not agree with them.

He also said that merit and justice must be done with the people to eliminate hatred in the city.

The mayor said that political governments owing to their ‘feudal’ thinking never acknowledged the third tier of government in the country, therefore they always refrained from holding local government elections.

He said that the political governments did not want to devolve the powers to lower level and even the present government preferred to release development funds to the members of provincial and National assemblies despite making claims of strengthening local bodies.

The mayor said that no improvement could be brought about in the country until the local bodies were strengthened.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2020