‘19 killed by robbers in a month’

Opposition MPAs blast Sindh govt over law and order situation

KARACHI:

Lawmakers took to task the Sindh government over the spate of killings of citizens at the hands of robbers in the metropolitan city.

The opposition MPAs blamed the Sindh government for failure to control the law and order situation.

"Nineteen people have been killed during robbery bids in the city during the one month," Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal MPA Syed Abdul Rashid said criticizing the Sindh government for its failure in tackling the law and order situation.

"PPP ministers bulldoze the opposition members' business listed on the agenda. We wanted to discuss the law and order situation but were not allowed," he said.

Referring to Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon's statement to run the bullet trains in the city, he said, "Instead of bullet trains, bullets are flying killing the innocent citizens in Karachi. Robbers are given free hand to loot and kill the citizens while the police and law enforcers are absent at the crime sites."

Regarding murder of 19 people in various incidents of robberies in the last one month in Karachi he said, "I want to know if the Sindh government has a security plan for the city. We are going to launch a protest in 24 different places in Karachi against the rising trends of street crime."

PTI's Firdous Shamim Naqvi while addressing the media outside the assembly said, police have become personal servants of the PPP leaders and its elected members.

"The senior police officers including SSPs and DIGs are also acting on the directives of PPP ministers and leaders to target political opponents," he said.

He was of the view that there had been no accountability process in the province since the PPP government came into power. "The public accounts committees and all standing committees of the assembly are placed under PPP MPAs." He said that PPP has broken all records of corruption and development is not on its agenda.

Lack of quorum mars Sindh Assembly session

Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani on Friday adjourned the Sindh Assembly session due to lack of quorum. The session was adjourned following the speaker's repeated warnings to the members to attend the session, otherwise action would be taken against absent members.

The issue of quorum was pointed out by the PTI MPA Jamal Siddiqui during the question-and-answer session. Raising the issue he said, "Mr Speaker most of the treasury members are absent from the houses. It is the government's responsibility to maintain the quorum, which is not complete today."

As per the assembly rules, if the house has the attendance of less than one-fourth of the total membership, any member can raise the quorum issue and the speaker can suspend the session and order the headcount.

The speaker on the request of PTI MPA asked his assembly staff to count the members present in the house. After the counting it was found out that there were only 31 members in attendance out of a total 168 members. The speaker ordered to ring the bell for five minutes and when the session resumed, the same number of members (31) were present in the house. It compelled the speaker to adjourn the session till Monday.

A few days ago, he had warned the absentee members to attend the session announcing that he would write to the election commission to de-seat those who are not interested in attending the proceedings of the assembly.

Earlier, as the session started, the chief minister's special assistant on information and technology, Tanzila Umme Habiba informed the house that her department has introduced a system at police station level to develop the data of those criminals who have been imprisoned in any case. "With this system, the police can monitor the criminals' activities," Tanzila said.

Responding to a question, she said that the Sindh information department has also started the WIFI system at some public universities and launched the same facilities at district headquarters.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2022.