KARACHI: Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has said that the Muttahida Quami Movement has again launched an attempt to cause an ethnic conflict in Karachi as it clearly sees its defeat in the forthcoming local government elections in Sindh.
Speaking at a press conference here at the Sindh Assembly building on Wednesday, Sindh Information Minister said that the MQM had again been attempting to promote hatred in the city by doing politics based on ethnicity and prejudice.
He said the opposition political parties in Sindh had resorted to protest against the newly passed Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill-2021 to prove that they had no interest in the genuine problems of the people of the province.
He conceded that there would be drawbacks in the working of the Sindh government as an effort could be made to overcome these issues but the same problems shouldn’t be used as a pretext to make an attempt to tarnish the law and order situation and promote hatred in the province. “We condemn such an attempt and will not let it succeed,” he said.
He said the MQM had the desire that the peace situation in Karachi got disturbed once more as their campaign to this effect based on hatred was condemnable.
The Information Minister said although MQM claimed that Karachi belonged to it but it had remained very much part of the process carried out in Islamabad to approve controversial population census results against the interests of Sindh.
He said that MQM previously had parted ways with the then PPP-led federal government four times against a hike in petroleum prices but now the party was more interested to secure benefits related to federal ministries instead of doing any protest against inflation.
He said that MQM had been maintaining complete silence and not doing protest against the issue of hike in prices of petrol, electricity, inflation, and natural gas crisis in Karachi despite that Sindh accounted for the majority of the gas volume produced in the country.
He said that MQM and other Opposition parties in the province had secured electoral victories through undemocratic means instead of securing the genuine mandate of the people of Sindh so they make no real effort to resolve genuine issues of the masses as these parties just strive to achieve their own vested interests.
To a question, the Sindh Information Minister told media persons that Sindh Chief Minister in the previous day had met Sindh Governor to convince him to sign the ordinance whose draft was recently sent to him by the provincial government as it served the national interest.
He said the proposed ordinance to regularise irregular residential buildings in the province had been sent to the Governor for promulgation as the Sindh Assembly was not in session.
He condemned the recent decision of the federal government to increase the electricity tariff of the powers consumers in Karachi by over Rs 3 per unit as it was an attempt to extort over Rs seven billion from the city.
Saeed Ghani told the journalists that the Pakistan People’s Party would hold protests in every part of the country on December 10 (Friday) against a hike in the prices of essential commodities, unemployment, and electricity, and gas-related issues caused due to incompetence shown by the federal government.
