June 24, 2008	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 19, 1429

KARACHI, June 23: Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Jam Madad Ali has said that the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government is looking for an excuse to undo the local government system.

“They never raised objections to the powers exercised by their nazims, but in the changed circumstances, when most of the nazims were not from their party, treasury members were criticising nazims, accusing them of misuse of powers,” he said.

Jam Madad, who is also the parliamentary party leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional, was speaking at a press conference after the third day of budget discussion on Monday.

He criticised the directive of the local government to the DCOs asking them to stop work on all schemes where up to 25 per cent of the cost had been spent. “Even this amount comes to millions of rupees, which will be wasted if these schemes, meant for public good, are abandoned,” he said.

In reply to a question, he gave credit to former chief minister Dr Arbab Rahim for eliminating sifarish culture from the education system by involving the IBA (Institute of Business Administration) in holding tests for the recruitment of teachers.

He said if the World Bank had sent any letter with adverse remarks in this regard – as was claimed by the education minister – the letter should be presented in the house.

Answering another question, he said that the return of Arbab Rahim from Dubai to attend the session depended on the situation on the ground in Pakistan. He repeated the allegations of political victimisation of PML-F workers.