KHAIRPUR, April 27: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has said that the Sindh government is studying a proposal to give land to poor men and women.

During a meeting with a delegation of Khairpur District Bar Association, which called on here him on Saturday, the chief minister said that the local government system in Sindh had done more harm to the society than benefits and it had now reached the highest level of corruption.

If the government did scrap the local government system altogether, it would at least bring drastic changes in the law governing the system to make it corruption free, he remarked.Mr Shah assured the delegation that the government would set up a lawyers’ colony in Khairpur and the facilities of drinking water, sewerage and other basic amenities would be provided to seven districts of upper Sindh on a priority basis.

Mr Shah said during a meeting with a delegation of local traders that the Sindh government would try to revive different trains’ stop at the district’s railway station.

Injustice and political victimisation reached a crescendo during previous provincial government and a 2005-07survey report of the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank gave bad governance as reasons behind poverty.

He alleged that the Chief Minister’s House during the days of Arbab Ghulam Rahim put a total of 1,800 summaries on the back burner and did not issue any orders on them.

He said that the caretaker government overstepped its mandate by illegally appointing more than 50,000 people in various departments. People had given this government a mandate to fulfil the mission of late Benazir Bhutto, he said.

He said that the government would make all the out of order tube-wells of SCARP functional to address the problem of salinity and waterlogging.

SHRINES: The chief minister said at a reception hosted by Faqir Sher Ali, custodian of the shrine of Sufi saint Loung Fakir, that the problems of the shrines of Sufi saints would be solved on priority basis.

Mr Ali called upon the chief minister to provide drinking water to the area surrounding the shrine and the chief minister assured him of solving the problem.

Earlier, the chief minister inaugurated a campaign of hepatitis-B vaccination at the Girls’ Primary School Jilani Mohalla.