he new Sindh government of the Pakistan Peoples Party will be faced with many serious challenges to ensure good governance in the province. Though Murad Ali Shah has been elected to the office of provincial chief executive for a third consecutive term, he will have to move fast and adopt innovative solutions to resolve governance-related issues in several sectors. Let’s take stock of the key challenges that the new Sindh government will be faced with in its first 100 days.

A major challenge the Sindh government will be faced with relates to empowering the local governments across the province, especially the main urban centres. For the past several years, large municipal agencies, particularly the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, have undertaken development projects funded entirely by the provincial government. The KMC, the Karachi Development Authority and other municipal agencies do not have their own resources to initiate development work. This situation creates an extra financial burden on the Sindh government. Opposition parties in the province, particularly the Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan and Jamaat-i-Islami, have long been demanding financial autonomy for local governments. The new Sindh government will likely face increased pressure to come up with a new Provincial Finance Commission award to financially empower the local governments as per the demand of the opposition parties in urban areas. It is hoped that the empowered local governments will then be able to deliver to the people and resolve their basic issues.

Moreover, the Sindh government has to establish its writ and restore its credibility among the people in the land-use area, particularly in Karachi. It is alleged that unscrupulous influential elements have established a system parallel to the provincial revenue authorities to illegally manage land use affairs in urban centres and suburbs. The Sindh Board of Revenue should be purged of dishonest officials who lend illegal support to such elements. The drive to digitalise land records should continue to bring transparency in the real estate affairs of the province. The recruitment of the revenue officials should be undertaken transparently under the aegis of the Sindh Public Service Commission. The government has to establish its writ against the elements involved in encroachments and illegal occupation of private and state land across the province.

The new government will also be expected to start a mass hiring drive. It has been a while since a PPP government in Sindh conducted a mass recruitment drive except for the provincial Education Department. A recruitment campaign on merit will be a major challenge for the new government.

Completion of a number of incomplete and pending development projects with billions of rupees of unspent sanctioned budget will be another challenge for the Sindh government. The new regime should focus on the completion of incomplete projects before launching new development schemes. Incomplete development projects create a massive throw-forward component in the provincial budget that creates a major fiscal problem for the government. This fiscal problem needs to be resolved as soon as possible.

In the education sector, the foremost obligation of the government is to improve the state of its schooling system. Educational infrastructure was massively damaged by the floods of 2022. This has created an additional challenge for the provincial authorities. The government should speed up the drive to enroll hundreds of thousands of out-of-school children in the province. The Sindh Education Foundation should join hands with charities and non-governmental organisations to build new educational facilities for out-of-school children. The new provincial government has to act fast to restore the credibility and worth of the public sector educational boards in the province. People have lost faith in these education boards that have failed to properly conduct matriculation and higher secondary examinations. The new government will also be under an obligation to meet the increasing funding commitments required to run public sector universities and degree-awarding institutes in the province.

In the health sector, there is a massive funding requirement to run and expand the free public healthcare system in the province and major hospitals like the NICVD and the JPMC in Karachi. The deteriorating state of the government’s basic health units and dispensaries is also a major challenge.

The Sindh government is also under an obligation to slash its wasteful expenditures. Outgoing caretaker law minister, Barrister Omer Soomro, in a video message just before the completion of his ministerial tenure, said that he hadn’t approved summaries involving sheer wasteful expenses such as spending Rs 15 million for procuring ajrak and Rs 10 million to be spent on purchasing handbags.

“If a minister in the interim regime lasting for only six months can prevent waste of up to Rs 100 billion then a massive sum can be saved under the full five-year tenure of an elected government,” he had said.

Ensuring transparency and merit in the award of contracts for development works by the government and ensuring that quality standards are maintained will be another challenge for the government.

On the law and order front, the operation against dacoits in the riverine belt of the province and the elimination of street crimes in the urban centres are major challenges for the new Sindh government.

Completion of the gigantic task of constructing 2.1 million houses for the people rendered homeless by the floods will be a massive undertaking.

The provincial bureaucracy is known for a weak commitment to punctuality. It is good that in his maiden speech in the new provincial assembly, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has warned provincial government officials to be punctual at work.

The writer is a senior reporter at The News, Karachi. He covers the federal and the Sindh governments, Sindh Assembly and politics