Allowing Karachi to have metropolitan corporation & limiting other cities to district, town councils is a dual system.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: Numerous u-turns taken by the PPP Sindh government on the local bodies issue, wherein they could not take on the nationalists and opportunists in the opposition camp, show that either the PPP stalwarts were themselves confused over the issue or were just banking on the opposition to scrap the Sindh Local Government Law. I have a question for all those who believed that this law would introduce a dual system in the province and that it was a conspiracy intended to divide it, have these people read the notification issued by the government that revives the 1979 system. It reads as: “Under the notification, issued by the provincial government, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, the district municipal corporations of the five districts of Karachi, and other district councils in other cities and towns have been revived.”
Obviously, allowing Karachi to have a metropolitan corporation while limiting other cities to district and town councils is also a dual system. The concerned people should enlighten us whether the PPP government will take action to scrap the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and introduce the system presently thought to be good enough for Umer Kot and Ghotki. The government still has two weeks before the provincial assembly is dissolved to do this. That is the only way to maintain a single system all across Sindh.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 2nd, 2013.
