SANGHAR: Activists of the Sindh Taraqqi-pasand Party and a large number of townspeople took out a rally in Khipro on Sunday to protest against failure of successive governments to resolve problems of Sanghar district.

Talking to journalists, STP leader Altaf Jiskani, Jam Shoukat Abro, Saleh Junejo and others said that Sanghar district looked shabby with infrastructure in very bad shape.

The protest was part of the STP protest movement launched since June this year against local and provincial authorities’ neglect of the burning issues of the district, they said.

They said that Sanghar to Khipro, Shahdadpur, Mirpurkhas, Nawabshah and Tando Adam roads had been in so rundown a condition for years that public transport had stopped plying vehicles on them, adding to people’s hardships.

They said that oil and gas exploration companies had been drilling out oil and gas from the district for years but they too had done little to contribute to community development as the state of infrastructure and people of the district had only gone from bad to worse.

They said the oil and gas firms denied jobs to local people and demanded the companies must offer jobs to locals.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2014