Sindh govt asks PM to convene NFC meeting

Talking to workshop participants, Murad Ali Shah criticises NAB role, boasts of improvement in Karachi

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has written a letter requesting the prime minister to convene a meeting of the National Finance Commission at the earliest, as the province has been waiting a long time for a revised distribution of national fiscal resources under a fresh NFC award.

Addressing the visiting participants of the National Security Workshop at the New Sindh Secretariat on Thursday, he said he had written the letter the previous day. The provincial finance commission in Sindh was being managed under a formula agreed in 2007, he said.

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The chief minister said that although the Sindh Assembly had adopted a law to repeal the National Accountability Ordinance-1999 in the province, it was being reviewed afresh in accordance with a decision of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

He said corruption was not an issue of the present times only as even the Quaid-e-Azam had referred to the problem in one of his speeches. He claimed that the National Accountability Bureau was used to make arrests only in Sindh. “NAB used to come (to the provincial government offices), take away official record and arrest officers. Resultantly, work in the province came to a halt,” he said.

Shah asserted that the bureau had failed to eliminate corruption. He said that an unbelievable charge of corruption to the tune of Rs452 billion had been levelled against PPP’s former federal minister Dr Asim Hussain. “Had he whisked away with him truckloads of currency notes of Rs5,000?”

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“My only earnest request is that a thief should be called a thief and no attempt should be made to whitewash any person. And similarly, no effort should be made to make a criminal out of a clean person,” he said.

He said the Sindh government was going to launch a programme to rehabilitate and improve the conditions in the old areas of Karachi under a $100 million package of the World Bank.

The CM said arms and ammunition had been brought into the city in massive quantities from outside as there was no weapons factory in Karachi.

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He said the provincial government had conducted a full-fledged and across-the-board operation, owing to which Karachi had turned into a peaceful city. He said the provincial police had been strengthened and the morale of the personnel raised by giving them training, increasing their salaries and ensuring recruitment on merit.

Shah said his government had inducted 20,000 personnel into the police and they had been trained by the army. Not much long ago, the law and order situation in the city had been far worse as 2,500 personnel had embraced martyrdom during the Karachi operation, he said, adding that now it had become peaceful.

He said the Sindh government granted Rs71 billion to municipal agencies across the province and Rs10 billion had been allocated in 2016-17 for major development projects in Karachi. Of the sum, Rs7.5 billion was spent to rebuild four important thoroughfares of the city. He said work had been launched to rebuild the civic infrastructure and facilities in Karachi. He said the portion of the National Highway between the Star Gate intersection and Quaidabad was being built by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation.

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The chief minister conceded that the education sector in the province needed improvement and said more work should be done in this regard. He said the annual budget of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in Karachi had been Rs700 million when it was under federal control and the allocation after the devolution of the health sector had been increased to Rs5.7 billion.

He said a cancer treatment unit had been set up at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre after its devolution to the Sindh government, where patients from across the country and seven other nations had been treated.

He said there had been a turnaround in the socio-economic conditions in Thar owing to the efforts of his government.

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The participants of the workshop included 10 MNAs, 16 MPAs, 30 representatives of the civil society, nine Inter-Services Public Relations officials and four major generals.