HYDERABAD: Acting Hyder­abad mayor Syed Suhail Mehmood Mashhadi and parliamentarians of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) have alleged that the people of Hyderabad are being discriminated against by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government in Sindh.

They regretted that the attitude of the federal government, to which their party was an ally, had also been indifferent towards Hyderabad over the past one year.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Jinnah Hall here on Tuesday, they said the people of Hyderabad were facing numerous civic issues and the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) was trying its best to address them within its limited resources. They said the provincial government was not doing what it had promised to do.

It was Mashhadi’s first formal interaction with media since Jan 10 when he took charge as mayor.

He told the press conference that the HMC was facing a deficit of over Rs20m every month in terms of octroi and zila tax (OZT) from the provincial government.

“We are getting Rs90m or so in a month which is exclusive of 15 per cent raise in OZT share which is assessed at Rs110m. Salaries, gratuity and pensions are calculated at Rs120m.

With these conditions, we are facing extremely difficult situation,” the acting mayor deplored.

Mashhadi – who has served as minister in the coalition government with the PML-N in 1990 – said Hyderabad city was being neglected as if it was an ‘unclaimed’ city.

“We have been meeting different government functionaries but in vain,” he said and added MQM’s elected representatives, including union committees’ chairmen, party representatives, parliamentarians and party workers, had tried round the clock to provide relief to people in the city during recent spells of monsoon rains.

He said the HMC was on tenterhook and kept on false hopes, but situation did not improve as far as resource availability was concerned.

“I spoke to the Sindh CM and he assured me that all grievances [of the HMC] will be redressed, including provision of machineries,” he remarked and said that the HMC had submitted its requirements, but not a single thing was provided.

He said Rs30 million were provided to the HMC monthly, which were utilised for salaries, gratuity and pensions of employees. He conceded that there was deficit in different recoveries of taxes. He said the officers, who believed in destruction of Hyderabad, were heading the Sindh Building Control Authority, Katchi Abadi and other departments. He urged civil society, lawyers, students, doctors and intellectuals to come forward to save Hyderabad.

He said the worn-out vans were not able to dispose of solid waste. The residents of Mahar Ali Housing scheme laid a siege to municipal staff when they went there for disposal of garbage as this remained the only designated site for garbage dumping, he added.

He said that another site identified for dumping was located in Jamshoro district. Yet, he said, the HMC was trying its best to dispose of garbage. Had it not been collected mounds of garbage, dirt would have been seen littered across the city, he added.

MQM MNA Salahuddin blamed indifferent attitude of both provincial and federal governments. He regretted that areas which were strongholds of the MQM were not being developed deliberately and being opposition party in Sindh Assembly, party legislators were raising issues inside the assembly, but their calls fell on deaf ears.

“The Sindh government posts municipal commissioner sans mayor’s consultation. Had the mayor been powerful in terms of some authority, he would have been able to deliver efficiently,” the MNA complained.

He pointed out that a rough estimate showed that the Sindh government earmarked Rs1,500bn for the development of Sindh in the recent past and Hyderabad should have been provided Rs50bn out of it.

He admitted that acting mayor must take steps to control corruption in the HMC.

The Sindh government did not upgrade the system of the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) which was under provincial government’s domain. MPA Rashid Khilji said the allocated funds were not spent efficiently in the past one decade and that was why the common man could not benefit from them.

He said the Sindh government was not constituting the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) because it had centralised all powers in itself after their devolution from the centre to provinces.

MPA Nadeem Siddiqui also spoke at the news conference.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2019