KARACHI: The Sindh government came under heavy criticism on Tuesday when the political parties raised serious questions on the government’s multi-billion rupee spending to meet monsoon challenges and asked the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) administration to make the audit of all these accounts public while accusing it of focusing more on ‘ethnic based’ policies instead serving the people of Karachi where the party had been enjoying tight grip on all civic and municipal authorities and bodies for the past more than 14 years.

The parties with different backgrounds ideologies and political agendas were found in agreement in their separate reactions to the devastation witnessed in the city during the rains and alleged that the PPP government wasn’t only ‘failed’ but “it is the most incompetent and corrupt administration” in the history of Pakistan, which never learnt from its experiences and hardly ever cared about the miseries of people in Karachi.

MQM-P blames PPP for ethnic-based recruitments

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), which had signed a Charter of Rights with the ruling PPP over three months ago, threatened to sever all ties with the provincial government of PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the Centre after it found that ‘nothing’ was improving when it came to rights of Karachi.

Former Karachi mayor and senior MQM-P leader Wasim Akhtar said that the recent devastation of Karachi was the result of the PPP’s ethnic-based recruitments even at grassroots level.

Murad says record rains coupled with high tide at sea caused urban flooding

“The people who were appointed on fake domiciles and were supposed to serve Karachi during these testing times, have left the city to enjoy Eid holidays in hometowns and villages,” he said.

“The people of Karachi have lost billions of rupees. Their homes, cars and properties all have washed away in this rain. Enough is enough. We can’t tolerate or wait anymore. If the federal and provincial governments still cannot take our demands seriously, we would be free to decide our political future,” he said.

PTI seeks FIRs against ministers

Holding the Sindh government responsible for the city’s situation following the rains, former Sindh governor and senior PTI leader Imran Ismail said that FIRs of all those killed during the rains should be registered against Sindh ministers and senior officials.

Addressing a press conference, he said it was because of the government’s failure that the people had to leave their homes and move their families to safe locations. He asked why the chief minister was not devolving powers to the district level in line with 18th Amendment to the Constitution.

Mr Ismail said that the PPP government in Sindh had divided Karachi into seven parts to get political benefits. He said that the CM had been claiming that he had developed Karachi far better than it used to be a decade ago.

He said whenever the previous federal government of PTI tried to fix things, the PPP protested against the ‘so-called intervention’ by the federal government in Karachi calling it an insult to its mandate despite the fact that the PPP had been insulting the mandate of the people of Karachi for a long time.

Downpour exposes PPP’s performance: JI

Talking to journalists during reviewing rain-related activities of Al-Khidmat Foundation, Jamaat-i-Islami Karachi chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said that every year downpour exposed the performance of the provincial and city administrations but wondered despite this “absolute failure”, the PPP was ruling the province for the past 14 years.

“There are 64 medium-sized rain drains in Karachi, besides five big drains and hundreds of arteries,” he said. “The last budget shows an allocation of Rs1.20 billion for cleaning of these drains. Well before the rains, we brought this situation before the public through media that these drains were full of filth. I would like city administrator Murtaza Wahab to explain how much funds have been utilised to clean the drains. If you combine the failure, corruption and incompetence, you can name it PPP.”

He also questioned the Defence Housing Authority (DHA), Cantonment Boards and federal agencies operating in the city for their “incompetence” despite generating billions of rupees from Karachi.

Unfortunately, he said, the political arena of Karachi was seen as a ground to accumulate resources, power and conquer the city while no political party and civic agency was actually ready to own the city.

PSP sees ruling elite behind destruction

Pak Sarzameen Party chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal said that Pakistani rulers were totally indifferent towards the plight of the people, and that he had nothing to demand from the ruling elite and ‘movers and shakers’ of the state, since they were “not going to change themselves”.

Speaking at a press conference, he said: “I ask the people to stop pinning their hopes on the rulers. The last year budget of Sindh shows the total revenue of Rs1,400 billion. According to this calculation, the share of Karachi should be Rs300 billion, but it is hardly given only Rs38 billion and they too fell prey to bribery and corruption.”

The only feasible and permanent solution to save and run Pakistan, he believed, lied in the three constitutional amendments already presented by the PSP. The departments of local government should be incorporated in the Constitution the same way as the details of the powers of the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers are written in the Constitution, he added.

“Like NFC award, PFC award should be included in the constitution. National and provincial assemblies cannot come into being unless there are elected local governments in the country,” he added.

Murad defends govt performance

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that the city had witnessed an unprecedented rainfall of 136mm or five inches of rains within 12 hours (8pm to 8am on Sunday-Monday) and then after a little break it started again till 11am.

“Our storm water disposal system is not designed for such a heavy downpour; therefore, the system could not cater to the situation and top of it the Arabian Sea was in a state of high tide, therefore our storm water drains could not discharge the accumulated rainwater into it,” he said on Monday while talking to media at CM House after visiting different areas of the city.

The CM said he had assigned rain emergency duties to his cabinet members in different districts of the city. “My ministers/advisers and special assistants are on the roads, but it was so heavy downpour (of 136 mm or five inches) that our storm water system could not cater to such a huge urban flooding.”

Mr Shah said that he had visited different areas of the city and saw civic agencies busy in disposing of the accumulated water from roads.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2022