DADU: Sindh United Party chairman Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah has decried high-level corruption in Sindh government and said that engineers concerned and high officers of district administrations act as “middlemen” for ruling party legislators.

The officers embezzled funds for development schemes, collected commissions from contractors and other sources of corruption and sent large cuts from the ill-gotten money thus amassed to all the persons concerned up to the highest level in the government, he said.

Mr Shah said at a public meeting at Ghanta Ghar roundabout in Mehar town, 64km from here, on Monday that if the National Accountability Bureau failed to take timely action to stem the rot, it would lead to serious economic crisis in the province.

He said that PPP legislators and their agents had purchased from the ill-gotten money thousands of acres of land, filling stations, bungalows and other movable and immovable properties worth billions of rupees in the country and abroad.

He said that poverty was increasing by each day but Pakistan Peoples Party rulers in Sindh and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in the Centre were busy maximising their personal wealth through corruption.

The poor but respectable women holding Benazir Income Support Programme cards were made to bear insults at BISP centres for the paltry sum though the money they received was public’s, he said.

He said the massive corruption had left roads, drainage system, streets, hospitals, schools and civic infrastructure in ruins and dealt a serious blow to agriculture sector and broken the back of the so-called backbone of economy.

Mr Shah said that senior officers of the irrigation department were not ready to listen to small growers’ complaints and demanded investigation into all development schemes carried out by the department for remodelling and repairs of canals and repairs of regulators and embankments over the past nine years.

He said the offices of district accounts and treasury had become hub of corruption and the officers of the two departments and their agents had become billionaires with properties in Pakistan and abroad.

He said that NAB was not taking action against corruption in an effective manner and rumours about another NRO to rescue the corrupt were rife. The SUP would welcome NAB’s action against corruption in Sindh, he added.

Earlier, Mr Shah accompanied by party leaders Roshan Buriro, Dr Dodo Maheri, Jagdesh Ahojo, Aijaz Samito and others led a rally from Kolachi Mori to Ghanta Ghar roundabout to voice protest against PPP government’s corruption and terrorism in the name of religion.

The SUP chief announced on the occasion that a rally titled ‘Sindh March’ would be staged in Larkana on Nov 25 against corruption and extremism.

LARKANA: Mr Shah said at a lawyers’ gathering at district bar association office on Monday that bad governance had prevented benefits of local government system trickling down to grassroots level.

The system was fine but the people who were running it were corrupt and they had withheld benefits of Rs850 billion funds Sindh received from federal government from reaching people, he said.

He said the SUP was a national democratic party which was struggling for the rights of Sindh, including protection of geographical boundaries of Sindh, Indus River, protection of language, right to rule and provincial autonomy.

“We will get the rights through democratic means from Centre after we have come to power and got rid of inept and corrupt rulers,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2017