Small victories: Pressure group tries to fix Sukkur’s potholes and garbage piles

Opposition says no budget for city; PPP admits no development works completed.

SUKKUR:

The Sukkur Development Alliance formed to put pressure on elected representatives to fix the city's roads and pick up trash has a long way to go before it can claim victory. The alliance has, however, achieved small victories by convincing the urban services corporation to give proper sanitation in three months.

According to the alliance's chairperson Jawed Memon, the newly posted managing director of the North Sindh Urban Services Corporation, Sukkur, Abdul Majeed Pathan, met them and promised to give better sanitation to the city within the next three months.



"The residents of Sukkur will get potable drinking water within six months," said Memon, quoting Pathan . "We are hopeful the officer to come to the rescue of the residents and get rid of these unhygienic living conditions."

Memon assured their struggle will continue as long as there are broken roads and other civic issues in Sukkur. "We are not against any particular political party or the elected representatives," he said. "But [we are] against those who loot and plunder the city's resources."

This protest movement initiated by the development alliance is a wake-up call for the elected representatives who have turned a blind eye towards the dilapidated condition of the city, Memon told The Express Tribune.

He recalled the Sukkur of the 1980s when it used to be neat and clean, and its residents were living in hygienic conditions. The drinking water supplied by the Sukkur Municipal Corporation used to be so clean that people had no need to even use filters, he said. "The roads used to look so wide as there were regular operations against encroachments."

In the past 15 years, everything seemed to have awry and massive corruption is to be blamed, claimed Memon. "Contractors enjoy political backing and are able to get full payments without even completing their projects," he said, giving the example of constructions on Miani, Bunder, Nishter, Clock Tower roads. He added that the paperwork shows that the work on these thoroughfares has been completed.



The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) officials laid the blame on contractors as well. The PPP has carried out several development schemes in Sukkur, such as fixing roads and building parks, but the contractors used substandard material, claimed PPP Sukkur president, Mushtaq Surhio.

He admitted that some of the contractors are close to the elected representatives of the PPP but, he added, that most of them are awarded contracts on merit. "There is no doubt that there is corruption," said Surhio, giving the example of a party leader who used to live in a small house but has become a billionaire now. "But the PPP has always provided jobs to the unemployed during its tenure," he added.

The opposition leader, Shaharyar Mahar, fails to see the development work at Surhio talks about. "The Sindh government did not allocate a single penny to Sukkur in this year's budget," he said. "When I and Muttahida Qaumi Movement's Saleem Bandhani raised our voices against this, we were told that Sukkur was allocated over Rs20 billion in the previous five years and that we should ask the elected representatives where those funds went."

Meanwhile, PPP Sukkur's general secretary Dr Arshad Mughal, who is also a special adviser to the chief minister, blamed the bureaucracy for the poor condition of Sukkur. For the projects left incomplete, Mughal said that their work was suspended due to the election campaign. "The government will release more funds to complete these schemes," he added.

Mughal also blamed the influx of people from the rural areas and the growth in the number of high-rise buildings for the miseries of Sukkur residents. "Most buildings do not have parking spaces or proper drainage," he pointed out, adding that those officers who approved the buildings plans should be taken to task.

As politicians shift blame back and forth, there are some who have joined the Sukkur Development Alliance, which plans to intensify the movement after Eid Miladun Nabi (pbuh). "We have printed a book that contains the problems of Sukkur and our demands," he said. "This book will be distributed among the elected representatives and bureaucrats of the city."

Published in The Express Tribune, January 3^rd, 2014.