Save Sindh Committee strike on Aug 13

Local government ordinance to be made into a law after Ramazan.

HYDERABAD: The Sindh Assembly will legislate to make the local government system a law after Ramazan, said the fisheries minister, Zahid Bhurgari.

“We will enact the local government law after amending it with consensus,” he told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.

The Sindhi nationalist parties are increasing pressure on the government in opposition to the local government system. Bhurgari is also the president of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Hyderabad chapter. He is facing strong criticism for a lack of development work in his constituency which also happens to be the headquarters of most of the nationalist parties.

According to the minister, the nationalists have developed a habit of crying foul at every step the PPP takes. “Practically, it has only been the PPP which has served the people of Sindh, while the nationalists only offered rhetoric.”

The Save Sindh Committee, a group formed after a meeting of all the nationalist leaders in Karachi, announced a shutter-down and wheel-jam strike on August 13.

Bhurgari said that the nationalist parties have every right to protest in a peaceful way, but they will not tolerate the abuse of PPP leaders’ pictures and harassment by mobs which gather outside their homes. “The nationalists should stop maligning my leadership, otherwise young workers of my party will retaliate,” he warned. The PPP youth, ladies and other wings are there to respond.

He said that his party had already apologised for creating two separate administrative systems. One of the nationalist parties announced to observe a black day on 14 August. “But the PPP will take out ‘Pakistan khappay’ rallies to show its popularity on the same day,” he said.

Meanwhile, the ladies wing of Awami Tehreek demanded immediate revocation of the 2001 local government system in Sindh, and reintroduction of the commissionerate system.  “We will lay siege to the residences of the PPP legislators if they passed the local government law from the provincial assembly,” the president of Sindhiani Tehreek, Husna Rahujo, had said at a press conference.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 11^th, 2011.