KARACHI: Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has said the real objective behind the protests staged by the opposition political parties in the province on the pretext of the local government system is to foment an ethnic conflict in Karachi.
Speaking at a press conference here at his camp office on Saturday, the minister said the genuine issues of the masses were being ignored by the Opposition parties in the province as they are protesting against the provincial local government law. He said the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was the only political party in the country, which in the recent past had staged countrywide protests thrice against the sheer incompetence by the present federal government, resulting in an unprecedented hike in the prices of daily use commodities.
He said the PPP’s plan to agitate against the anti-people policies of the federal government would continue, as in this connection protests would be held in every district of Karachi including outside the Sindh Governor House.
Saeed Ghani mentioned that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Muttahida Qaumi Movement, and Grand Democratic Alliance had joined forces to collectively stage a protest demonstration in Karachi against the provincial local government system.
He said the PTI had been in power in the centre and three provinces while MQM and GDA had been the coalition partners in the present federal government. He said these political parties had chosen to protest against the provincial local government law while they had been keeping silence on the genuine issues of the masses. He said the provincial local government system was merely being used as a pretext as the real motive behind the plan of these parties to stage protests was to divert the public’s attention away from the real issues of the masses.
He said that people in the country had to massively suffer due to a constant increase in the electricity tariff while the same was the situation in the case of other essential products including medicines.
Saeed Ghani said the farmers in the country had been facing hardships due to the unavailability of fertilizer; resultantly, the people would face a situation of wheat flour shortage. He said although MQM and GDA claimed that they had been fully sincere with the people of Karachi and the rest of Sindh but the federal ministers belonging to these parties had never spoken on the constant suffering of people of the province due to the increase in petrol prices and acute shortage of natural gas.
The provincial Information Minister praised Defence Minister, Pervez Khattak, for showing courage before Prime Minister Imran Khan to raise the serious issue of gas shortfall in his province while similar initiative in the best interest of people of Sindh had never been taken by the federal ministers belonging to MQM and GDA. He recalled that MQM in the past regime had left the coalition government setup four times to protest against the increase in the prices of petroleum products but now the same party hadn’t registered its protest on the same issue.
He said the opposition parties in the province had chosen to stage protests on the issue of municipal governance in Sindh as they had sensed that they had to face a crushing defeat in the forthcoming local government polls in the province. He said the ruling parties in the centre had been celebrating the passage of the ‘mini-budget’ despite that the fiscal move would impose additional taxes to the tune of billions of rupees on the masses.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022