CM boasts of making Karachi’s crime rates go down by 40%, reducing killings by 23%

Qaim Ali Shah’s five-year performance report rejected by opposition.

KARACHI: The five-year performance report presented by the Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah during the Sindh Assembly session on Monday was rejected by the opposition leader.

“Whatever the government says has not been implemented so far,” said opposition leader Syed Sardar Ahmed. “It has failed to maintain law and order in the province. It has created grave disparity between the rural and urban areas and participatory democratic values do not exist in the government.”

In his report, Shah claimed that the government has not only contained the law and order situation in the city, but has reduced killings by 23 per cent and crime rates by nearly 40 per cent. The situation in the rest of the province is also under control, he added.

Nevertheless, Shah admitted that Karachi is fragile and that the poor law and order situation has caused pain and misery to thousands of families. “It will not be incorrect to say that this is an off-shot of the larger conflict that this country is fighting,” said Shah, who also holds the portfolio of the home department.



Insisting that the law and order situation has been contained across Sindh, Shah compared the death tolls in Sindh and Punjab. “Around 4,000 people have lost their lives in Karachi as compared to 19,000 in Punjab in just one year,” he said. “They are criticising us, but not the Punjab government,” he added, without clarifying who ‘they’ were.

Meanwhile, the opposition leader felt the police are to blame. “How one can assume good results when an SHO cannot stay at the job for more than two months” he asked. “SSPs are transferred within days and this will not bring good change.”



The budget to improve law and order was increased from Rs9 billion in 2008 to Rs32 billion in the current year, Shah told the house.

‘ECP prevents govt from giving jobs’

“We are an elected government and have a right to give jobs to people given our party manifesto, but it is very unfortunate that the election commission has banned recruitments before the election scheduled is even announced,” said the CM.

Referring to the Abbas Town blast, Shah said that the government reached the spot and announced Rs1.5 million for the families of those who died. He was, however, upset that several policemen were suspended in the aftermath. “How can we maintain law and order when senior police officers have been suspended?”

For the opposition leader, the fault lies with the new local government (LG) system. “The Constitution says we should devolve our system at the lower levels, but the government was not willing to hold local government elections for the last three years,” said Ahmed. According to the Constitution, the government should hold a cabinet meeting after every two weeks, but only two to three meetings have been held, and all decisions are made without it, pointed out.

‘Million of rupees for unsure employees’

Responding to Ahmed’s remarks, the CM pointed out to the several appointments in the water and sewerage boards that were made by the city district government. “Can you tell me how many people from rural areas have been inducted over there?” he asked. “We, the provincial government, are giving around Rs500 million salaries to these employees without knowing for sure if they are performing their duties.”

Resolutions

On Monday, the Sindh Assembly also passed a unanimous resolution condemning the Joseph Colony incident in Lahore and termed the incident a pre-planned attack by the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz. The house also passed another resolution moved by MQM MPA Bilqees Mukhtar to include the blood group of people in computerised national identity cards. Later, the session was adjourned till Wednesday.

The CM boasts of the following achievements:

Rs688 billion for development projects

Rs122 billion for education department

Rs22 billion for the health department

Rs30.3 billion for coal development

Rs8 billion for industries

Rs55 billion for the road sector

Rs24 billion for irrigation and agriculture

Rs41 billion on relief and rehabilitation during two floods

Rs25 billion for Karachi’s K-IV water supply project

Rs32 billion for law and order improvement

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2013.