Sindh rejects islands development authority

KARACHI: The Sindh government on Monday formally rejected the move by the federal government to establish Pakistan Islands Development Authority through a presidential ordinance and demanded the central government to immediately withdraw it.

In a statement issued on Monday, Sindh Information and Local Government Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah said that the two islands off the coast of Karachi were under the ownership of the Sindh government. “They belong to Sindh as the people of Sindh have the right to them,” said the information minister. “We reject any plan for development, which will take place at the expense of the local people,” he said and added that the local fishermen and the people of local communities alone have the right to these islands.

He said that the newly-promulgated presidential ordinance would trample the provincial autonomy and also usurp the rights of the local people. “It is the demand of the Sindh government to immediately withdraw this ordinance,” he said. The PPP also opposed the attempt on the part of the federal government to occupy the islands off the coast of Karachi through the promulgation of a presidential ordinance.

In a statement, PPP Sindh Information Secretary Senator Aajiz Dhamrah said that they would never support any such ordinance. “The Pakistan People's Party believes in provincial autonomy and it will resist any move of the Federation to occupy the land of any province,” he said.

The PPP will oppose this ordinance at every relevant forum, including the National Assembly, Senate, and Sindh Assembly, he said. “We do consider this ordinance issued by the federal government as an attack on the 18th Constitutional Amendment as people will never tolerate such a move,” Senator Dhamrah said.

He hoped that apart from the PPP, all the other political parties and other relevant quarters working for the cause of democracy would never tolerate such an ordinance. He said that the PPP would forcefully resist such a move on the part of the federal government.

Dhamrah also criticized the statement of Prime Minister Imran Khan in which he termed the people from interior Sindh as an obstruction in the path of development of Karachi. He said that such a statement by the prime minister would promote ethnic divide in the country. “One should take cognizance as for whose pleasure the selected prime minister is attempting to princial Assembly, and the Senate.” The Chairman of Pakistan People’s Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, has likened the recent move of the federal government to assume control of two islands off the Karachi’s coast for development to the illegal annexation of Occupied Kashmir by the Narendra Modi’s government in India last year.

The PPP chairman said that his party would oppose the move of the federal government in the National Assembly, Senate, and Sindh Assembly. The PPP chairman on Monday took to twitter and wrote: “The Pakistan People’s Party will oppose the illegal annexation of Sindh’s islands through presidential ordinance by the PTI’s government. I ask how is this act any different to Modi’s actions in occupied Kashmir? Move will be opposed in National, Provincial Assembly, and the Senate."