Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Sunday said that the Sindh government will not knock down illegal settlements along Karachi’s drains until their occupants are provided with alternative places to reside.
Addressing a rally of party workers at KDA Chowrangi in the city’s district central, he was of the view that the government would clean stormwater drains but would not render people living in illegal structures around nullahs homeless. He stressed upon the need for taking care of the affectees of the anti-encroachment drive.
Bilawal mentioned that the Green Line mass transit project wreaked havoc to Karachi’s drainage system, emphasising that the megacity’s drainage system will have to be fixed. “People suffered a lot due to unprecedented monsoon rains in the metropolis.”
Urging party workers to rally behind him the way they used to support slain PPP leader Benazir Bhutto, he said that the party’s government in Sindh would “snatch the National Finance Commission [share] and other rights from the Centre” with their support.
The statement came a day after Prime Minister Imran Khan announced a historic Rs1.1 trillion financial package for the execution of a transformation plan meant to address the city’s chronic issues and meet its developmental requirements.
Briefing the media about the Karachi package at the Governor House on Saturday evening, the premier had said that the federal government was fully aware of the problems being faced by the people of Karachi over the past many years and the PTI government had now decided to resolve all the perennial issues of the metropolis.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 7th, 2020.
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