LARKANA, March 24: Sindh was striving hard to get its due share from National Finance Commission award, said Waseem Akhtar, adviser to Sindh chief minister on local government here on Wednesday.
Talking to local officers, he said: "We are waging a war for it." Criticizing feudal lords, the adviser said that they prefer to reside in Karachi after being elected from the interior of Sindh instead of serving their constituencies.
He said it was high time the people living in the interior of Sindh chose their representatives from the middle class. The emergence of leadership from the middle class was a must, he said and added: "We should tell our generation not to bow before any feudal lord."
He expressed concern over the plight of the Larkana district in terms of the volume of development schemes and called for spending funds honestly. "Perhaps", he said, "we had not felt our responsibilities and discharged duties with dedication which was why Sindh had not achieved the level of development it should have."
While visiting Taluka council Larkana, the adviser was told about the yawning gap of distribution of funds among different union councils and taluka councils in the province.
Nazeer Shaikh, the Taluka Nazim, said that since the abolition of octroi tax system, the government had failed to hammer out a 'fair' formula for funds distribution among local councils in Sindh from the 2.5 per cent general sales tax share it receives from the National Finance Commission.
He said that there exists a vast imbalance in the shares to the councils. Citing an example, he said Larkana gets only Rs21 lakh per month but Rohri council receives Rs42 lakh, Khairpur Mir Rs30 lakh, Mirpurkhas Rs38 lakh, etc.
He said it was quite astonishing to note that Karachi alone receives 70 per cent of the total share of the GST the federal government releases to the Sindh government.
He demanded distribution of GST funds on population basis among the local councils. The adviser assured equal distribution of funds among all the Taluka councils in Sindh. Later, he inaugurated a 'free treatment' ward recently established in Chandka Medical College Hospital.
ILLEGAL DETAINEES: A court official on Wednesday raided Qubo Saeed Khan police station and found two persons illegally detained there. Hakim Ali Jamali, a resident of Punhal Khan Jamali (Shahdadkot) filed a petition with the district and sessions court, Larkana.
He alleged that ASI Ghulam Qadir Mughiri of investigation wing of police had arrested his relatives, Mushtaque Ahmed and Abdul Malik, on March 14, 2004, and since then kept them in illegal detention.
The sessions judge appointed Muhktair Lanjar as raid commissioner with instructions to pay a surprise visit on the police station. The raid commissioner, on a tip-off, raided a private house near police station where the two villagers were kept with a police constable Barkat standing guard.
The detainees were brought to the police station and the officials were asked to provide documents, if they had any. The investigation police failed to produce any valid documents showing the arrest of the two villagers.
The raid commissioner let off the villagers and asked the ASI to attend the court on Thursday along with papers regarding the arrest of the villagers. The relatives of the detainees were also asked to come for hearing the same day along with both the villagers.
BODY FOUND: The Dari police on Tuesday found the body of Riaz Hussain in the Abubakar graveyard. Police said head injuries had caused the death of the man. Five bullets were also recovered from the pocket of the deceased.
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