LARKANA: Sindh’s Senior Education Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has said the Pakistan Peoples Party will not support the sit-ins to undemocratically dislodge the government.

Speaking at a press conference at the press club here on Thursday, he said that “we are not against any political party holding public meetings” no matter in Islamabad or elsewhere, as the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) was planning to hold, but the political parties should carefully chose the day.

Mr Khuhro said it was PTI chief Imran Khan who stood by retired Gen Pervez Musharraf when the former strongman had said those who supported and opposed him should divide themselves in two lines. He was Mr Khan who had lent support to Gen Musharraf and what good people could expect from him, he added.

PPP won't back PTI's 'mid-term poll' move

Responding to a question, he in categorical terms said that “changes in governments may take place” but assemblies should not be responsible for it and democracy should grow. He cited the example of removing prime ministers.

He said “persons may change” but not the institutions. “We are the signatories to the Charter of Democracy and will continue to support democracy for which we had made tremendous sacrifices,” Mr Khuhro said.

Turning to his ministry, he said initially 5,000 schools were closed, but within one year’s efforts the Sindh government had got opened 1,800 schools. He said by the first week of August in a period of six months, the provincial government would complete recruitment of 20,700 teachers by distributing 2,300 appointment orders among the NTS-pass candidates of Sukkur division. This would help assist in making 300 more schools operational. Also the Sindh Education Foundation had been entrusted to make 300 schools functional, he said.

Sindh had adopted Article 25(a) of the 18th Amendment in which rules were being framed about education, he said, adding in the same breath that the federation had yet not transferred provincial autonomy to the provinces.

He warned the unregistered private schools to immediately register themselves or face the consequences.

He criticised prolonged power outages in Sindh and added the chances of establishing solar power stations in Sindh grew bleak as the federal government had imposed 35 per cent taxes on importing solar panels at the eleventh hour when exporters were ready to install five solar power projects in Sindh.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2014