SUKKUR: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) general secretary Maulana Rashid Mehmood Soomro has said that Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari have left jobless youths of Sindh in the lurch after having plundered resources of the province with both hands.

He was speaking to participants of a sit-in his party workers had staged at the deputy commissioner roundabout in Jacobabad on Thursday. The protest was part of the party’s recently launched movement against corruption titled ‘Corruption Mitao — Sindh Bacaho’.

The maulana said that he was all alone when his father Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro was assassinated but he did not lose heart and did not sit idle till police arrested the killers.

He said that Asif Zardari and Bilawal had left youths of Sindh alone after having ‘plundered’ resources of the province. Sindh, despite being rich in natural resources including the Indus, fertile land, oil, gas, coal and other minerals, was in shambles, its roads had become potholed and buildings of its school, colleges and hospitals were falling apart, he said.

The maulana said that his party had waged ‘war’ against all anti-Sindh schemes from Karachi to Kashmore and they had let the opponents of Sindh know that people had cast off the yoke of slavery and taken the field to fight a long battle against corruption and for their bright future.

He said that he had been waiting for the past two years for nationalist leaders as well as for Pir Pagara to come forward and launch the struggle against the menace of corruption but neither took the initiative to unite against injustices with Sindh. Finally, he had to step in all alone to protect Sindh and its people from the ‘plunderers’ of PPP.

Corruption worth billions of rupees had been committed in development works and social welfare department of Jacobabad, he said.

He said that even the job of sanitary worker had been sold for Rs400,000 each and demanded chief justice of Pakistan and chief justice of Sindh High Court should immediately take notice of massive corruption in the Sindh government.

Other JUI-F leaders, including Dr A.G. Ansari, Saeed Ahmed Banglani and Ali Hassan Buriro, said that funds worth billions of rupees had been allocated for carrying out development works in Jacobabad district over the past eight years but no work had been done physically.

The water being supplied to the town was highly contaminated, with the result that a large number of people were suffering from hepatitis-B and C in Jacobabad, they said.

They said the water supply scheme which had been built at a cost of Rs1.5 billion had developed defects, forcing residents of the town to consume highly contaminated water.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2017