HYDERABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) secretary general Amir Mehmood Kiyani has lambasted the Sindh government for delivering nothing for public welfare despite getting funds of Rs7,500 billion from the Centre over the past 10 years.

Addressing party workers and speaking to reporters here at the Insaf House on Friday, he said the provincial government did not spend a single penny on social welfare and uplift of people.

He said that both Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) were busy in politics of interests and their children.

He said Sindh’s cities were replete with heaps of garbage, adding that the provincial leadership of the party and rulers lived in spacious bungalows and they had nothing to do with the poor, who were not able to have two square meals a day.

Mr Kiyani said the caravan of tabdeeli had entered Sindh and the “corrupt mafia” of this province was now landing in jails. He said the cases against them had not been instituted by the PTI government. Rather, the two main political parties lodged them against each other.

He said national institutions were working independently and Prime Minister Imran Khan also wanted to bring reforms in them.

Soon after installation of the PTI government, it repaid $10bn loans, he said, holding out assurance that difficult days would be over soon.

He said the federal government was promoting foreign investment to create employment opportunities and control price hike. Unnecessary imports had been stopped and industrialisation was being encouraged in collaboration with foreign investors, he added.

He said Pakistan was the fifth most populous country in the world and the PTI government intended to get it included in the list of top-performing countries. The past governments had taken loans to embezzle money, he added.

The PTI leader stated that the way both parties [PPP and PML-N] had distributed provinces among themselves in the name of democracy for loot and plunder had no parallel in history.

He said the recovered looted wealth would be spent on people’s uplift. He said the PTI government had released Rs1,300bn to the Sindh government but no improvement was seen in the cities. Unless garbage was cleansed from minds, the situation would not improve in Karachi, he said, adding that the PTI would first eliminate corruption to cleanse minds. Elimination of corruption needed major operation which was under way.

He said 165 departments were a burden on the national kitty in the country. PTI government was reforming them without going for downsizing.

He said that due to incompetence of the past rulers, Pakistan’s foreign policy had faced failures but now the policy had changed and that was why Imran Khan was highlighting Pakistan’s issues as well as the Kashmir issue at the international level.

He said it was for the first time that world powers and the United Nations were compelled to discuss the Kashmir issue and they were subscribing to Pakistan’s narrative.

He said Maulana Fazlur Rehman had headed National Assembly’s Kashmir committee for 14 years. It was a blunder and the cost was being paid by the people of Kashmir.

He said that Imran Khan had become the ambassador of Kashmiris to highlight their plight at all forums. He hoped that the way Mr Khan was fighting Kashmir’s case, the region would win freedom.

He said Pakistan Army deserved credit for reviving peace and responding to needs of disaster management in the wake of natural disasters.

Sindh PTI president Haleem Adil Sheikh also addressed the workers.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2019