KARACHI: PPP appeals for making May 12 strike a success
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, May 8: The PPP Sindh Council has appealed to the people of Sindh to respond positively to the May 12 strike call given by the Anti-Greater Thal Canal and Kalabagh Dam Action Committee to deplore the government for demolishing goths, building big dams over the Indus and destroying Sindh’s economy and ecology.
Syed Qaim Ali Shah, provincial chief of the party and chairman of the action committee, told a press conference at the People’s Secretariat after the council’s meeting that the PPP had decided to submit a requisition on Tuesday for a Sindh Assembly session on the issue of demolition. He pointed out that the government had bulldozed the agenda every time the PPP requisitioned a session.
He accused the speaker of toeing the government line.
He asked the government to refrain from taking discriminatory steps by demolishing old villages. Otherwise, he warned, people would take to the street.
He said the PPP was committed to raise its voice on the issues of Sindh in a democratic and legal manner.
He also announced launching of PPP membership drive across the province.
The PPP Sindh Council meeting also strongly condemned the government’s inhuman campaign of demolishing old villages in Karachi and Hyderabad, and alleged that the government was relentlessly pursuing its anti-people policies, unmindful of the loss of lives in accomplishing its goal of utter devastation.
It also condemned the treatment meted out to PPP MPAs, who had raised their voice against the demolition.
Ms Sherry Rehman, Dr Fahmida Mirza, Waqar Mehdi, Rashid Rabbani and Fauzia Wahab were also present at the meeting.
Mr Sajjad Bukhari, chief election commissioner for the party elections, spelt out details of the party membership drive, saying that the process, which commenced on May 1 from Punjab, would be completed in three months following which elections at grassroots level would be held in the first phase.
He said that the drive in Peshawar would be launched on May 15, in Balochistan on May 22 and in Islamabad on May 29.
Syed Qaim Ali Shah said the Sindh Council meeting deplored the “massive rigging by the government in the recent by-election in Hyderabad and rejected the results. He said it was of the view that free, fair and transparent elections could never be held under Gen Musharraf's dispensation.
The council slammed the government for pursuing anti-worker policies and rendering thousands of industrial and agricultural workers across the country, especially in Sindh, jobless.
The meeting also rejected the government’s claim about economic progress, and maintained the growing number of people losing jobs, prolonged and unannounced power failures in Sindh, including Karachi, belied the claim.
It accused the government of selling out national assets to foreigners, thus jeopardizing the country’s national and strategic interests.
It noted that more than 4,000 industrial units in Sindh were rendered inoperative but the regime was on a selling spree disposing of the profitable units that were the country’s real assets.
The meeting also criticized the privatisation of the Pakistan Steel and the KESC.
