KARACHI: Unfazed by the Saturday arrests of four Altaf Hussain loyalists in Karachi and Hyderabad and subsequent verbal attacks by the London-based leadership, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan head Dr Farooq Sattar said on Sunday that the Mohajir community and workers should not be confused or demoralised as the party he was leading was their sole representative.
Dr Sattar, who always condemned raids and arrests of “innocent workers”, did not say a word about the arrests by the Rangers of septuagenarian Dr Hasan Zafar Arif, long-time colleague Kunwar Khalid Yunus, Amjadullah Khan and Zafar Rajput — all members of the Altaf Hussain-led MQM-London — in his press conference held at the party’s temporary headquarters in PIB Colony.
Instead, in a thinly veiled reference to the loyalists belonging to the MQM-London, he said that all those associating themselves with the Aug 22 events — when Mr Hussain raised anti-Pakistan slogans during an incendiary speech — were conspiring to send the whole community and the party into a blind alley.
Against the backdrop of Mr Hussain’s warning to his own lawmakers to either resign or face the people’s wrath, Dr Sattar condemned the attempts to pressure the elected representatives to quit assemblies and warned all those elements to stop otherwise his party could seek a “legal and constitutional” remedy against them.
“If there are some workers who have anti-state inclination then I appeal to their families to keep an eye on their children and persuade them to dissociate themselves from such activities,” he said in an apparent reference to young Altaf Hussain loyalists who recently took to Azizabad streets.
Accompanied by senior leadership as well as party’s lawmakers and elected local government representatives, he announced that the MQM would soon launch a public contact drive to solve people’s problems with whatever resources its parliamentarians and local government representatives had.
He said the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board was not answerable to the Karachi mayor, as the board worked under the Sindh government.
Likewise, he said, the responsibility of sanitation also lay with the Sindh government as it controlled the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board and not acting Mayor Arshad Vohra.
He said the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and the district municipal corporations did not have resources.
Dr Sattar demanded that the KWSB, the Karachi Development Authority, Solid Waste Management Board, master plan and building control authority be placed under the elected local government. “Such functions should not only be entrusted to Karachi but to the local governments of Larkana, Sukkur, Hyderabad, Khairpur and entire Sindh as well as Pakistan.”
He said that of the Rs60 billion collected as Sindh Sales Tax at least Rs20bn should be given to Karachi as around Rs57bn was collected only from Karachi.
The MQM leader also criticised the working of the Sindh Public Service Commission and said that 11 members of the SPSC possessed the domicile of Sindh-rural and there was no representation of Sindh-urban.
He said the SPSC chairman was being told to appoint thousands of people without interviews and it seemed that there was no check on the Sindh government.
He said the MQM was setting up offices in its temporary headquarters in PIB Colony, where elected representatives would sit and listen to problems of the people. “Acting Mayor Arshad Vohra will also sit there once a week to address the grievances of the people,” he added.
Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2016
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