2017 headcount remains dubious, claims QAT

Lower than actual population shown in census results

HYDERABAD:

The Qomi Awami Tehreek President Ayaz Latif Palijo has said the population census 2017 failed to perform correct headcount of the people living in the districts of Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur and Larkana divisions.

Talking to the media in Sukkur on Friday he said the lower than actual population of these divisions has been reflected in the census results .

"The Pakistan Peoples Party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf have compromised on the census in Sindh," he alleged.

Palijo blamed the Center for ignoring the province, saying that development in Sindh is not on the federal government's agenda.

He also accused the center for subjecting the officers hailing from Sindh to discrimination in their federal jobs. He called for providing the federal jobs to the people of the province besides starting distribution of the health cards as well.

He said Sindh has been producing surplus gas but the people in the province have been made to suffer from unrelenting gas outages. "

Palijo said a polarising local government system will be unacceptable in the province which had resisted the attempt to introduce a similarly divisive system back in 2013. He demanded that free, fair and transparent LG elections should take place at the earliest so that the power could be transferred to the lower levels of the administration.

"The LG system shouldn't mean to serve the interests of the ruling elite but those of the common people." He contended that the centralization of authority in Pakistan, corruption and extremism have made the country's people feel insecure.

The QAT's leader, who is also general secretary of the Grand Democratic Alliance, bemoaned that the crimes are again rearing their ugly head in the province. He condemned the recent murder of a Hindu trader, Satan Lal, in Daharki. "The criminals and the feudal lords have made lives of the minority communities difficult."

 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 5^th, 2022.