HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party’s provincial and local leaders on Monday lambasted the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) for their harangue against Sindh government and said that it should first account for its own performance when it had been controlling civic bodies for decades.

Speaking at a news conference in the local press club, PPP’s Sindh information secretary Ajiz Dhamra, former MPA Abdul Jabbar Khan and newly-appointed general secretary of the party’s Hyderabad chapter Waseem Rajput accused the MQM-P of having destroyed the city’s civic bodies by itself while it had been controlling them since 1988 until recently.

Performance of the incumbent PPP-backed mayor, who has been elected for a first time, is far better than Muttahida’s, they claimed.

Jabbar Khan said that the MQM-P did not have any moral ground to take on PPP. He said PPP had done a lot of development work in a short span of time after getting the slot of mayor.

Accuses MQM of having destroyed the city over four decades

He pointed out that PPP got built the Abdul Sattar Edhi road, which would connect city areas with highway.

He said 90 per cent of the work had already been completed and the remaining was pending on account of certain issues and added encroachments were blocking further progress.

He said that the mayor was also trying to get express feeders from Hesco to run sewerage facilities in order to avoid an emergency situation during rainy season.

Similarly, he said, Latifabad Unit-4 filtration plant would ensure bulk drinking water supplies for the city.

Ajiz Dhamra lashed out at MQM-P for its “usual rhetoric against PPP on ethnic grounds” which, he said, had been going on for decades.

“City has changed now … Jabbar Khan and Waseem Rajput both being Urdu-speaking Sindhis and belonging to Hyderabad city were now representing PPP,” he said.

He maintained that if the city was without drinking water today, the MQM-P was responsible for this because it had ruled over the city for 35 to 40 years.

Dhamra dubbed MQM-P representatives as “shehri jagirdars and waderas”, and challenged that if Muttahida had done anything, it should present it to the public. He asked MQM lawmakers to tender their apology first for doing nothing for people.

Six canals project rejected

Speaking about federal government’s plan to dig six canals, Dhamra said PPP’s instance was quite clear. The Sindh chief minister had opposed the Cholistan and other canals through his letters to the federal government and asking it to convene a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI).

He criticised those who were taking on President Asif Zardari for chairing a meeting on Green Pakistan Initiative where the issue was discussed. He argued that the presidency did not have executive powers.

PPP would reach out to masses after exhausting all remedies at parliamentary forums, he said, adding that these matters were to be discussed in National Economic Council (NEC) under the chairmanship of prime minister.

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He recalled that PPP had attended JUI-F’s multiparty conference, where the Sindh irrigation minister had shared all facts and figures on this issue. Sindh’s representative had opposed the canals project in the Central Development Working Party (CDWP) meeting as well, he said.

Dhamra said that the Sindh chief secretary had written letters to federal government thrice to share his concern over these projects.

Jabbar Khan said that issues of Hyderabad Water & Sewerage Corporation relating to disbursement of salaries and pensions were under consideration of government.

He said that he had informed government that unless subsidy for the corporation was restored, things could not change, and noted that such a subsidy was given to Punjab’s Wasa.

He said that recruitment in the corporation had been made on political grounds. “If such employees were retrenched, then it would become another political issue.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2024