A top-level meeting chaired by Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Friday decided that the next administrators in Karachi will be the natives of the city.
The new administrators will be appointed after the completion of the terms of the Karachi mayor and the DMC chairmen. The meeting recommended that it was not necessary that the city administrators, who would head the municipal agencies, should belong to the provincial bureaucracy as they could also be members of the civil society.
Speaking on the occasion, Bilawal criticised “the people who dream about handing over Karachi’s control to the federal government without any valid cause”. He said there was no basis to demand that the federal government should assume the control of Karachi on the basis of the city’s civic problems caused due to natural reasons.
“If such demands are made then it will not remain specific to the case of Karachi," he warned. The PPP chairman said Karachi was his city and its development was dear to him. He said the people of Karachi had the right to make “decisions about their native city and the federal government should not decide about the capital city of Sindh”.
He said the PPP as being the ruling party of the province would not make any compromise on the authority vested in the party on the basis of the mandate given by the people of Sindh. He said the politics on the basis of ethnicity and hatred had only multiplied Karachi’s civic problems.
Bilawal said only the PPP could provide solutions to the problems of Karachi. “Like all citizens of Pakistan, I stand with each and every resident of Karachi.” He said the Sindh government had been doing a commendable job to develop Karachi but there was a need to further accelerate and expand this work. “There will be no compromise on the continuity of efforts to resolve Karachi’s issues.”
The meeting held a consultation on the need to “reorganise the PPP’s Karachi chapter”. PPP’s Karachi Organisation Committee chief Waqar Mehdi briefed the participants on the current situation of the city.
The meeting, held at the Bilawal House, was attended by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, PPP Sindh President Nisar Khuhro, PPP Women-wing President Faryal Talpur, former CM Syed Qaim Ali, PPP Karachi President Saeed Ghani, PPP leaders Taj Haider, Rashid Rabbani, Najmi Alam, Sharjeel Memon, Murtaza Wahab, Sajid Jokhio, Ghulam Muhammad Samoon, Kahlid Lateef and Syed Nasir Hussain Shah.
