KARACHI: The political consensus among the stakeholders of Karachi appears to be eroding fast as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on Tuesday accused Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah of “sabotaging” the recent efforts to find a solution to Karachi’s civic and infrastructure problems.

Only on Saturday, the Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and MQM-P had, in the presence of a senior member of the security establishment, agreed to form an advisory committee comprising representatives of the three parties for Karachi in a meeting held at the Governor House.

On Sunday, CM’s Law Adviser Murtaza Wahab told the media that the committee would be headed by CM Shah and comprise Sindh ministers Nasir Shah and Saeed Ghani of the PPP, federal ministers Asad Umar and Ali Zaidi of the PTI and Aminul Haque of the MQM-P.

However, speaking at a press conference here at the party’s temporary headquarters in Bahadurabad, senior MQM-P leader Khawaja Izharul Hasan said that the chief minister “sabotaged” the process to form the three-party committee when he told a press conference on Monday that “under no condition would Sindh share powers with anyone” and that a committee was formed between governments and not political parties.

“It is beyond our comprehension that why the chief minister had made cleanliness of Karachi a matter of his ego. He [CM] is the head of solid waste department but they cannot even lift garbage from the city. They have deliberately destroyed the local government system of Karachi,” he said.

He said the MQM-P believed that the mere formation of committees was not the solution of Karachi’s problems as a permanent solution lay only with an empowered local government system under Article 140-A of the Constitution.

‘PPP separated Karachi from Sindh’

Responding to the CM’s Monday presser, Khawaja Izhar questioned why they made it an issue of Sindh’s unity when the MQM-P demanded just resources for their city.

The CM had said at the press conference that the people talking about bifurcation of Sindh were the enemies of Pakistan and that the division of the province was not possible “in our lives”.

Khawaja Izhar said that the PPP government had itself separated Karachi from Sindh by dividing the city into six parts.

The MQM-P leader alleged that the PPP had started misleading youths on the pretext of a threat to Sindh whenever the people of Karachi talked about their rights or even demanded just share of water.

He asked youths of Larkana, Qambar-Shahdadkot, Dadu and other rural parts of Sindh to hold their elected representatives accountable for not providing better civic facilities in their areas.

He alleged that the provincial ministers and government officials were minting money and not spending funds even in the rural parts of the province. “The Sindh government has turned Karachi into Larkana and Larkana into Moenjodaro.”

Khawaja Izhar, who is also an MPA, said that Karachi needed 1,200mgd water but it was not given even 500mgd. He said that the cost of the K-IV water project had increased from Rs25 billion to Rs125bn because of the “incompetence” of the Sindh government.

He said around 200,000 government jobs of Karachi had been sold to the people of rural Sindh and when questions were raised the PPP termed it an attack on unity of Sindh.

‘Karachi Conference’ soon

He said that the MQM-P had decided to call an “all-party conference” titled Karachi Conference for the solution of problems of Karachi as well as to strengthen Sindh and Pakistan.

Without giving any date, he said that the MQM would also raise the issues of Larkana and Dadu in addition to the issues of Karachi in its MPC.

He said proposals had been sought from youths, civil society, traders, etc for the proposed conference.

He said that Karachi was deceived in the name of 18th Amendment under which “corrupt rulers” got more powers than the people.

Speaking on the occasion, bureaucrat-turned-politician Javed Hanif said that Karachi was made Pakistan’s capital after independence.

He asked why the country’s capital was shifted from Karachi, under whose mandate and under which law.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2020