HYDERABAD: Hyderabad Mayor Tayyab Hussain has said that it is unfortunate that the Sindh government has not accepted the LG institution although it is a reality and has been put in place on the orders of the apex court.

Speaking at the local press club’s ‘Meet the Press’ programme on Saturday, the mayor claimed that the provincial government was reluctant to delegate powers to elected LG representatives, including mayors, as enshrined in the relevant ordinance. “That’s way mayors and other elected LG representatives are unable to deliver,” he argued, and pointed out that he, along with the Karachi mayor, had moved the apex court to seek remedy.

Mr Hussain was of the view that the Sindh government was unwilling to empower LGs which had rendered them crippled. In this situation, he added, people were losing faith in their elected [LG] representatives as their issues relating to cleanliness, water supply etc were not being addressed.

The Hyderabad mayor said that the city’s elected representatives did not have the required machinery, equipment and other essentials at their disposal to manage the city’s affairs. They could not even have the authority to consult the bureaucracy and seek its assistance in getting people’s issues resolved, he added.

“Despite all these odds, we are not disappointed ... we are doing our level best to deliver,” said Mr Hussain.

He observed that neglect on the part of the [now defunct] administrators and other authorities of the city over the last eight years had resulted in piles of garbage lying scattered everywhere across it. Encroachments had added to the miseries of residents and visitors, he said, adding that civic issues were increasing with each passing days due to crumbling infrastructure but elected LG representatives were not being allowed to work. “People are still facing insanitary conditions due to choked and overflowing gutters and nullahs, un-attended garbage dumps, supply of contaminated water, power outages and excessive loadshedding, education and health issues etc,” he noted.

In reply to a question, the Hyderabad mayor said that the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) was getting around Rs90 million a month on account of octroi and zila tax and another Rs30 million from the provincial government under the heads of salaries and expenditure, respectively.

The mayor explained his priorities with regard to the Rs500 million Hyd­erabad Package recently ann­ounced by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Regarding his plan to beautify the city, Mr Hussain said he and Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar were in touch with some local and foreign NGOs regarding some ‘public-private partnership’ ventures in this regard.

Regarding the ongoing anti-encro­a­ch­ment drive, he said he had held mee­tings with the deputy commissioner and other officers concerned and had also discussed the issue with Sindh LG Minister Jam Khan Shoro. “There sho­uld be a uniform policy and indiscriminate action to ensure removal of encro­achments from the city’s roads, streets, parks, pavements etc,” he stressed.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2017