KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party on Wednesday expressed its “disappointment” over remarks of the chief justice of Pakistan who described the Sindh government as a “total failure”.

In a statement, senior party leader and PPP core committee member Senator Taj Haider said: “If the situation in Sindh from Karachi to Kashmore is so bad, then thousands of people would not be arriving in Sindh on daily basis from rest of the country”.

At present, 60 per cent of patients were being treated in Sindh’s public-sector hospitals for free, who had come from other provinces and other countries, he said.

He referred to the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT), National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), Liver Transplant Hospital in Gambat and cancer treatment facilities, which Senator Haider described as “rated second to none”.

“So is the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Sukkur, which is rated as the best university in Pakistan. The Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company in Thar, which is reducing our dependence on imported fuel, is a trend setter in self-reliance. Very soon the production of coal would increase four times that of its present level,” he said.

“It is the failure of the federal government in collecting and transferring tax resources to provinces that remains the major handicap in the development of the provinces. It is sad that the Honourable Chief Justice has raised the possibility of the failed federal government correcting the problems faced by the Sindh government. It is also very unfortunate that the Attorney General, who belongs to Karachi, seconded this move instead of briefing the Honourable Court about problems faced by the Sindh government due to the failure of the federal government and its step-motherly treatment of Sindh.”

He urged the chief justice to take notice of issues of “complaints of throwing out of polling agents from polling stations in the general elections 2018, failure of the Federal Board of Revenue, the fraudulent census 2017, which did not count heavy migration from other provinces, which is causing depletion of resources and aggravation of civic problems”.

He also asked the chief justice to take notice of treatment meted out to the accused and litigants in lower courts, delays in taking up reference of judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the pending case of land reforms, the ‘political victimisation’ and ‘one-sided’ accountability and many other such cases.

The PPP leader in his statement quoted late Justice Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, who once emphasised the role of judiciary for the progress of the country.

Mr Justice Ebrahim had said that if the judiciary had been doing its job properly, many things in the country would have been set right, said Senator Haider.

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2020