Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Monday voiced reservations over the working of Supreme Court-appointed water commission and said if the judiciary interfered in administrative matters then operations would not be executed properly.

Shah said that the provincial government was complying with the orders of the apex court. He was addressing a gathering in Hyderabad.

“Let judiciary take care of its own work. If it interferes in administration’s work the issues will not be resolved. I can’t be a journalist and a cricketer can’t be a politician so let everyone take care of his own job”, he said.

In June, Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro, acting as the one-man judicial commission appointed by the Supreme Court, had issued notices to the chief secretary and secretaries of the health, irrigation, public health engineering and rural development departments, as well as heads of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board and Karachi Port Trust chairman asking them to explain why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against them for defying the apex court’s March 8, 13 and 16 orders.

The commission pointed out that in its March 16 order, the SC had directed the irrigation department to minimise pollution in the channels carrying clean water [for consumption of] the general public in Sindh and that a task force should take remedial steps to stop the menace [of contamination].

It noted that although the task force chairman and Sindh government submitted reports about efforts made to identify points and had found many outlets discharging wastewater/effluent into the channels, probably no measure/step to check this was taken by the government within a month as required.