HYDERABAD: Pak Sarzam­een Party (PSP) chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal has called for awarding special status with autonomy to cities like Karachi, Lahore and Hyderabad under the local government system as they are growth engines like any other cities of the world.

Mr Kamal was talking to reporters at an Iftar dinner hosted by the PSP at a banquet. PSP president Anis Qaimkhani, Shabbir Qaimkhani and other leaders were also present.

He said the PSP had proposed that Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad should be given special status in the local government system with autonomy. The cities must have administrative and financial autonomy so that they could prove themselves to be growth engines of the country, he said, adding that it was a normal practice in the developed world.

Regrettably, he observed, new cities were not established in the country and the only one that had been developed was Islama­bad, which had fallen prey to bureaucratic greed. He said Karachi alone could generate Rs8,000 billion which was actually needed for the country’s economy. He said PSP’s proposal should be worked on as a test case.

He ridiculed the demand for a separate province being made by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), arguing that the party that did not have the authority to clear drains in the metropolis was demanding a new province. He termed it a conspiracy to foment ethnic riots. He said PSP would foil the conspiracy. He said it was a slogan meant only to hoodwink people.

The MQM-P could not deliver a single speech over the issue in Sindh Assembly but it was raising such a demand outside. He recalled that the party had been enjoying a mandate of urban centres over the past 30 years but failed to deliver.

Mr Kamal said that Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) failed to develop Larkana and other cities. He said [estranged MQM-P lea­d­er] Dr Farooq Sattar had clai­med that Rs9bn were given to the Karachi mayor and another rep­ort suggested that Rs75bn were released to him. No expenditure was seen against these funds, he noted. “I, being the mayor had built Karachi, which is larger than 65 countries in the world,” he said.

About MQM-P’s threat to leave the federal coalition, Mr Kamal said he knew that party could not quit the coalition on its own, because “they do not have the authority to do so”.

He said MQM-P was a coalition partner at the Centre and, therefore, it should get the issues of those living in federal quarters in Karachi resolved. “What it will have to do is just to get one signature of the prime minister,” he said.

The PSP chief said the MQM-P could not take a stance on census and it was just befooling people.

He urged National Account­ability Bureau (NAB) chairman Justice Javed Iqbal to step down and get himself cleared from some commission in the wake of a romantic conversation, being attributed to him and a woman, that emerged in the electronic and social media.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2019