UC 233 Township: Political science student leaves PTI, gets PML-N ticket for chairmanship

LAHORE:

The Pakistan Muslim League-N and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf candidates are the main contenders for the chairman’s seat in in Union Council No233 (in Township), a survey of voters shows.

A Pakistan Peoples’ Party is also in the run for the chairmanship.

The UC is home to middle- and lower-middle class households and includes Township’s Sector A1 and Blocks 2, 4 and 6 of Sector A2.

PML-N ticket holder Syed Imran Aleem Shah says he is enrolled in a masters’ in political science programme and also looks after his family business in the area. His running mate for vice chairman, Shahbaz Ali Jafri, owns a steel fabricating business.

Shah says he had recently ended his association with the PTI over what he says is lack of discipline in the party. He says he had joined the party following PTI chairman Imran Khan’s jalsa in October 2011.

Shah says he believes the PTI leaders have little control over the party’s internal affairs. “PML-N is a disciplined party. It respects its workers,” he says.

PTI ticket holder Fareed Ahmad Khan, a property dealer, says he had won the nazim seat in the UC in the past on a PML-Q ticket.  Khan says he has been a resident of the neighbourhood since 1979 and has intimate knowledge of its problems. He recalls installation of two tube wells and two water filtration plants and renovation of buildings of a junior public school and a girls’ middle school among the development works he had undertaken as UC nazim. “If elected, I will resume the development work where I had left it eight years ago,” he says.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, several residents mention lack of clean drinking water as the major problem in the area. Other issues are broken roads and lack of streetlights.

The PTI ticket holder for vice chairman, Shahnawaz Rasheed Khan, says installation of water filtration plants was on top of his agenda. He says he will also seek upgrade of education and health facilities. “The PML-N has transferred education and health to authorities set up at the provincial-level. I will do whatever it takes to improve these facilities,” he says.

Besides water supply, sewerage and streetlights, PML-N candidates also highlight high crime rate as a problem needing immediate attention. Shahbaz Ali Jafri says about 100 motorbike theft complaints had been brought to his attention in the past two months. “If elected, I will work with the local police to control the crime rate,” he says.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2015.