KARACHI: Mayor Wasim Akhtar has demanded that Prime Minister Imran Khan give the share of Karachi and Hyderabad in the National Finance Commission Award directly to the municipal administrations of the two cities as the Sindh government is not willing to give it in the Provincial Finance Commission.

“The Sindh government has completely failed to address the people’s lot,” he said and added that the “misuse” of 18th Amendment by the Sindh government had destroyed the two major cities of the country.

The mayor was talking to media persons after inspecting the cleaning work of Gujjar Nala on Thursday. He deplored that the Sindh government was not releasing the funds allocated for developmental work in Karachi and Hyderabad.

“The federal government must give the share of Karachi and Hyderabad in the NFC Award directly to local body institutions of the two cities so that the basic civic and municipal problems of the people could be solved as the Sindh government is not willing to give it in the Provincial Finance Commission,” the mayor said.

He said the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation had launched a massive operation to clean all major storm-water drains in the city before the advent of monsoon. “However, there will be no use of cleaning drains until the Sindh government ... ensures that all city garbage is shifted to landfill sites in the outskirts of the city”, he added.

Mr Akhtar said that the city’s storm-water drains were being cleaned and desilted on an emergency basis owing to the upcoming wet weather and the cleaning work of Gujjar Nala had been completed.

“But this is not a permanent solution to the problem. The drains are now cleaned twice a year,” he said, adding that the problem would persist even if the drains were cleaned four times a year.

The mayor said that the real solution to save drains from choking was the proper disposal of garbage which was frequently thrown into the drains.

He pointed out that the Sindh government was responsible for lifting municipal solid waste in the city, but it had failed to perform the job.

The mayor said the provincial government was already not interested in solving problems of the masses and lamented that a meagre amount of Rs45bn was allocated for Karachi in the federal budget.

He appealed to the prime minister to immediately announce a special package for the development of Karachi and warned that the whole country would also be affected if problems of the metropolis were not solved.

The mayor also said that he would ask the MNAs belonging to his party to review the party’s alliance with the PTI in case no attention was paid to problems of Karachi.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2019