‘Talks about dividing Sindh will fade if MQM-P joins us’

Syed Murad Ali Shah says this is why PPP has invited MQM-P to quit the federal govt

HYDERABAD: As the rift widens between Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said the contentious talk of Sindh’s division will die down if the latter joined the provincial government.

“If they [MQM-P] become allies of the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Sindh government, they will not talk about dividing Sindh,” said Shah, talking to the media during the inauguration of the Rehabilitation Centre at the district headquarters hospital in Badin district.

“This is why we have invited them to quit the PTI government in the Centre and join the Sindh government as a coalition partner,” claimed Shah, evading a question about MQM-P’s oft-stated stance on the creation of a new province in Sindh.

Responding to a query about gas outages in Sindh, Shah said that the provincial government had made an emphatic case during the meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) on December 23, 2019. “The Sindh government presented its case and won the backing of six out of eight CCI members.”

According to him, the supporting members said that Article 158 of the Constitution unequivocally stated that the province producing the gas has the first right to meet its consumption requirements. He added that despite an adverse stance over the division of petroleum in the CCI meeting, the members supported Sindh’s standpoint.

“I have been waiting to receive the minutes of the CCI’s meeting so that I can pursue the matter [of continued gas outages in Sindh] with the prime minister,” he said, adding that the minutes are supposed to be issued around seven days after the meeting but his office is yet to receive them.

The CM further said that his government had requested the Supreme Court to form an implementation committee for the utilisation of the amount recovered from Bahria Town Karachi in Sindh. He reiterated that the land sold to the company belonged to Sindh and the sum of money being recovered by the apex court should be spent on the province’s people.

Regarding a recent decision of the Sindh Cabinet against the demolition of residential structures built on alleged encroached land, he said that the cabinet’s decision had also been conveyed to the bureaucracy. “No house will be demolished until alternate arrangement is provided,” he declared.

Shah also complained against the federal government’s indifference to the spread of locusts in Sindh. He claimed that his government had paid between Rs10 million to Rs12 million to the Centre’s Plant Protection Department for carrying out aerial spraying, but to no avail. He said that the provincial government was now trying to hire planes from China or Middle Eastern countries to get rid of the pests.

Earlier, while speaking at the inauguration, Shah said that public-private partnerships had delivered the best services to the people of Sindh in the health sector. Acknowledging that there was a shortage of doctors, nurses and technicians in Sindh’s hospitals, he said that the government had appointed 6,000 doctors but the shortage was still persisting. 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th, 2020.