PTI’s recruitment drive in Sindh to begin from July 7

Drives in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have already concluded.

KARACHI:

Trying to gather as many supporters as it can from Sindh and Balochistan, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has extended its membership drive for the two provinces till July 31.

Membership drives in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have already ended but they will end in the other two provinces just ahead of the party elections announced for September.

On June 30 PTI’s secretary-general, Dr Arif Alvi, dissolved all the party’s steering committees and wings to prepare for the election process. The only exception was the Insaf Student Federation which announced to launch the recruitment drive in Karachi and the rest of Sindh from July 7, at a press conference on Friday. ISF Sindh President Alamgir Khan said that the drive will enable the people to elect their own leaders when the party holds its elections.

The federation’s Karachi chapter organiser, Fazal Malik, said that the drive will begin from Malir district and will continue for 20 days in all the towns of the city. In the rest of the province, the student volunteers will carry out the party campaign.

ISF’s claims to have its presence in 26 out of 27 districts of Sindh - the only exception being Tharparkar, where there is no institute of higher education.   PTI began its SMS membership campaign last year. While there are no accurate figures available for Sindh, Khan told The Express Tribune 150,000 people joined the party in Karachi through the cell-phone membership drive.  The PTI is expecting a positive response from Karachi’s youth and is confident that its young volunteers have what it takes to attract supporters without any help from the party leaders. “When we organised the Karachi jalsa we led a rally of thousands of people from NIPA, without any support from any of our leaders,” said Arsalan Taj Ghumman, the ex-president of ISF Karachi. He said that the ISF expected that the number of new party recruits will be five times the number from the rest of Sindh. The ISF now has a good number of supporters in Sukkur, Hyderabad and Mirpurkas districts.

According to Imran Ghazali, the PTI volunteer looking over the social media campaign, people can register with PTI by sending their name and city to 80022.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2012.