Murtaza Wahab for ending ‘politics of segregation’ as he takes charge of KMC administrator

Barrister Murtaza Wahab, the newly-appointed Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) administrator, on Friday said his main task would be to end the politics of segregation as he took charge of the post.

“Problems were solved in the last four or five years. I will bring change; I will give the policy after preparing my action plan regarding city service. We will immediately give as much relief as we can to the citizens. Karachi is the city of all of us. If necessary, we will also sit down with the federation and discuss the issues of Karachi,” he said in an introductory meeting with KMC officers.

According to a statement issued by the KMC, the administrator said he had seen both the rise and fall of the municipality. “I don't want to blame anyone. We have to improve this city. Everything can be done if the intention is clear. I don't want to talk about problems, I believe in their solution,” he remarked.

Wahab directed the KMC departmental heads to formulate their own action plan, provide full details of what they would do to improve the city in the next 30 days and explain how the issues of parks could be fixed. “It's a city of lights. I'll not sit in the office or at home, but work in the streets," he said.

No institution in the world, he said, could function without financial stability. “We need to achieve the target of tax and other collections,” he maintained. The administrator vowed to work for the city without any discrimination. He said there were many problems in Karachi and he needed the cooperation of citizens to resolve them.

Wahab conceded that at present, water shortage was a major issue of the city that could not be resolved immediately. “I do not have control of the water board but it is a civic body of Karachi and we will talk to it.”

He also spoke to media persons after taking charge as the KMC administrator. Responding to a question, he said if the Pakistan Peoples Party PPP was a bigoted party, he would not be appointed as the KMC chief.

“Any officer or other employee belonging to any party has to fulfil their responsibility and we need to work together. I will not go into the details of what happened in the past, I will just say that we will move towards betterment from here,” he stated.

Bilawal meets Wahab

Chairman Pakistan Peoples’ Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that the recent changes in the Sindh cabinet reflected the essential component of check and balance as an integral part of the government elected by the people of the country.

He stated this on Friday as he met at the Bilawal House the newly appointed ministers and advisers to the chief minister. The newly appointed Karachi administrator, Barrister Murtaza Wahab, also met the PPP chairman.

Bilawal said the recent changes in the provincial cabinet would help the Sindh government to continue with its journey to serve the people of the province and develop Sindh in an effective and improved manner. He said the democratically elected government of Sindh always stood with the people of the province in all their testing times.

He said the government of the PPP had been doing its best to resolve the problems of people of the province. He claimed that the performance of the Sindh government had been much better than that of other provincial governments despite the prevailing coronavirus emergency and lack of cooperation from the Centre for the development of the province.

He said the resolution of the problems of the people of Karachi was a foremost obligation of the government. The PPP chairman said that the record number of development projects had been completed in Karachi during the PPP’s rule in the province.

The newly appointed ministers, advisers and Karachi’s administrator assured the PPP chairman that they would do their best to serve the masses in the best possible manner in order to come up to the expectations of the party leadership.

They also expressed gratitude to the PPP leadership for assigning them new responsibilities after trusting their qualities related to governance. The PPP chairman also met newly appointed Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah at the Bilawal House.

He asked Shah to do his best to improve the education sector in the province. Shah has been assigned the portfolio of education for the second time. Bilawal said that no nation could make progress without education. He asked the education minister to upgrade the status of the government-run schools in Sindh. “We want that educational facilities in Sindh are as good as is the status of health facilities,” he said.

The minister said that he would try his best to extend the facility of education to every child in the province despite having limited resources and plenty of problems.