Centre has been discriminating against Sindh, says CM Murad

Claims Sindh-based legislators are given no answers in parliament

HYDERABAD: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that Sindh does not feel discriminated against because the province is not in the British royal couple's itinerary.

"Rather the federal government's denial of Sindh's due share under the National Finance Commission Award and the Centre not releasing the province's share of water from the Indus River are injustices," said Shah, while responding to a question during a media talk in Bhit Shah, Matiari district, on Wednesday.

The CM earlier attended the closing ceremony of the three-day annual urs celebration of the great Sufi poet Hazrat Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai. He maintained that the Centre has been subjecting Sindh to discrimination as no other province is meted out such treatment.

"The Centre's injustices have increased so much that the federal government no longer answers the questions of Sindh-based legislators [in the parliament] about the province's problems," he claimed. Commenting on Federal Water Minister Faisal Vawda's opposition to appointing two members of Indus River System Authority (IRSA) from Sindh out of a total of five members, Shah described Vawda's statement as vacuous.

He contended that the Chief Executive Order of 2000 of former president General (r) Pervez Musharraf with regard to giving two slots to Sindh in Irsa was given constitutional cover in 2002. Vawda's ministry said in a statement last week that the IRSA Act of Musharraf was not amended following the executive order.

The CM reiterated that he had opposed the route of the K-IV water supply project for Karachi in 2014 but he was then blamed for being an opponent of the metropolis' development. "During the prime minister's [Imran Khan] visit to Karachi in September 2018, he was told by an honourable person that the K-IV project's designed route is flawed, since then work has stopped on the project."

Nevertheless, he said the provincial government will extend complete cooperation to resolve the bottlenecks in the K-IV project which after completion will supply an additional 185 million gallons per day water to Karachi.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2019.