July 09, 2008	Wednesday	Rajab 5, 1429

KARACHI, July 8: The Sindh High Court Bar Association on Tuesday asked the government to curb lawlessness, price hike and scarcity of essential commodities.

Condemning bomb blasts in Islamabad, Karachi and Quetta, an SHCBA resolution said that instead of ‘pursuing’ an American agenda like their predecessors, the present rulers should rise to the occasion, come up to the expectations of the people and implement their manifesto of ‘roti, kapra aur makan’ (food, clothing and shelter), reinstate the deposed chief justice and other judges of superior courts and restore a sense of security among the people.

An SHCBA managing committee meeting, held under the chairmanship of its vice-president Z.K. Jatoi, deplored that the first 100 days of the new government had witnessed a manifold increase in their sufferings and miseries.

“The government’s performance only demonstrated its inability to provide relief to the poorer sections, who had voted for it in the hope of alleviation of their hardships. They were facing food shortages and a forbidding increase in prices. They had even been deprived of their safety and security by the rising incidence of crime and terrorism,” the resolution stated.

The association condemned the ‘targeted’ killing of advocate Mustafa Qureshi in Quetta and demanded immediate arrest of the culprits followed by exemplary punishment. Expressing sympathy with the bereaved family, it called upon the government to sanction adequate compensation to the lawyer’s dependants.