Karachi turned into unhygienic city despite paying taxes: Haleem Adil

Leader of Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Haleem Adil Shiekh said on Wednesday that Murtaza Wahab was responsible for the destruction of Karachi and the departments he was heading.

Addressing a crowded press conference at the Sindh Assembly, flanked by MPAs Raja Azhar, Ali Aziz GG, Shahnawaz Jadoon and Dr Seema Zia, he said taxes collected from Karachi were embezzled, and Karachi had made an unhygienic city. He said street crime was on the rise in the megacity, and additional IG had not been given the powers to manage policing in Karachi. H claimed that the police were being managed by some other influential people.

Sheikh said they tried to frighten him by putting him in jail, but Allah Almighty granted him courage. The rulers are trying to gag the voice of the people of Sindh, he said, adding that no one could gag the voice of people.

He said Sindh had drowned in floodwaters, but the ruling PPP was trying to manage the media and social media so that no one could raise their voice against it. Sheikh said a terrorism case was lodged against a senior citizen in Naushehro Feroze because he dared to protest against the government’s apathy towards the flood victims.

The opposition leader said it was the height of cruelty that in Sindh wheat flour was being sold at Rs120 per kilogram. He said advertisements of millions of rupees were issued for subsidized flour at Rs65 per kilogram, but the discounted flour was available nowhere. He said a provincial minister claimed that 700 stalls had been established for “Sasta Atta”.

The opposition leader said they had investigated the issue and come to know that no one was willing to buy the substandard flour being given by the government. He said millions of flood-affected people in Sindh were sitting under the open sky, but relief aid had not reached them. He said the government claimed that more than 300,000 tents, 2.8 million mosquito nets, cooked food and other relief goods had been distributed among them, but the facts were contrary to these tall claims.

Sheikh said the acting speaker of the Sindh Assembly formed a parliamentary committee to oversee the distribution of relief goods and renegade PTI MPAs Shaharyar Shar and Sachanand were made its members, but no genuine opposition member was included in the committee, and they therefore rejected it.

He said flood victims in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were rehabilitated in one week while those affected by the natural calamity in Punjab were provided with relief within a few weeks. He alleged that the rulers wanted in Sindh to commit corruption in relief funds. He said that due to corruption in the Sindh Irrigation department, many towns of the province had been submerged in floodwaters. He said that if Manchar Lake was opened at zero point ten days ago, the damage due to floods in lower Sindh would have been less.