HYDERABAD, July 9: Sindh Minister for Information Shazia Marri said on Wednesday that the president had no right to amend the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award because it was an exclusive right of people as enshrined in the 1973 Constitution.

The minister said at an oath-taking ceremony of the Hyderabad chapter of the Pakistan Association of Press Photographers (PAPP) at the press club that her party had been raising the issue of NFC when it was in the opposition and would solve it now.

This government would not only solve the NFC issue but also the concurrent list and the provincial autonomy, she said, adding that the government would give autonomy to provinces to strengthen them so that they should not have to beg the federation for funds.

She said that the dictators never showed any respect towards the Constitution and did not let democracy take roots in the country. The dictatorial forces always forgot that they could stifle an individual’s voice but not gag the masses, she said.

Referring to suicide bombing in Islamabad and serial blasts in Karachi, the minister called for forging strong relations between the federating units to be able to foil the conspiracy aimed at creating rifts between them.

“It’s a conspiracy against the country but we will live together irrespective of such incidents,” she said and added that the present government wanted to provide relief to people and that was the reason PPP co-chairman had been avoiding confrontation since day one.

She said that safer and brighter future would be ensured for future generations and “we need not make our children aggressive or violent.” It was high time that “we pondered on how to take the country and the province forward and remove all hurdles to our progress,” she remarked.

“We inherited mountains of crisis from the previous government but we are moving ahead in a gradual manner and today patron of that undemocratic regime himself admits that the regime he headed was run by his sycophants,” she said.

She said that when governments were run by an individual and his cohorts then the question of people’s representation was pushed to the back burner. The present government was still facing the repercussions of decisions taken by the outgoing government, she said. They made people dependent on subsidy and aid through an artificial system but failed to give them economic stability, she said.

She said that people would have benefited from the decisions if they had been taken at macro level and trickled down to micro level. “We don’t make people dependent on subsidy because we are taking right decisions and today people are aware of everything,” she said.

Ms Marri accused the outgoing government of fanning hatred between the provinces and deepening rural-urban divide. She pledged that the present government would do away with this disparity.

She said that all the federating units would grow stronger to make the federation strong. The government would ensure institutional development because people’s fundamental rights were linked to it, she said.

She paid tributes to press photographers and journalists for playing a dominant role during struggle for democracy.