HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party Sindh president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has said that the federal government has shown its “bias” against Sindh by deducting its funds under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) amounting to Rs900bn for the year 2021-22.

He was speaking at a press conference at the Quaid-i-Awam University in Nawabshah on Saturday after chairing a meeting of its senate.

Mr Khuhro said the federal government rejected 17 schemes of Sindh under the PSDP and also refused to launch a scheme pertaining to the remodelling of the Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD). He said the federal government also did not release its share in the Jamshoro-Sehwan road for which Sindh had spent its own share of Rs7bn over the last four years.

Mr Khuhro accused the federal government of settling its score with Sindh by denying the province’s allocation for development and share under the NFC Award. He noted that other provinces did get their shares.

The PPP leader said that the Hyderabad-Sukkur Motorway project was approved in 2020 but federal government wanted to execute this Rs900bn project on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis which was great injustice.

Khuhro says money deposited by BTK in SC also be released to Sindh govt

He pointed out that Rs27bn had been allocated for 10 schemes of Sindh but the amount was reduced to Rs3bn. He said the NFC Award had become due first in 2015 and then in 2020 but it was still not announced.

Mr Khuhro held that federal government or ministers could not interfere in the NFC Award affairs.

He said federal government did not allocate funds for Karachi because it wanted to get most schemes executed under the public-private partnership. He said the funds that were deposited in Supreme Court in the Bahria Town Karachi case should be handed over to Sindh, claiming that the money did not belong to federal government.

Commenting on the violent incident over BTK project, he said BTK or anyone else could not be restrained from their business activities. Acts of arson could not be allowed, he said, adding that PPP did not believe in [MQM founder] Altaf Hussain’s way of politics. He said PPP would offer legal support to those who could prove that their lands had been occupied by BTK. He noted that the Sindh Action Committee had already disassociated itself from the June 6 acts of arson and violence. “Now SAC’s protest plan against police action is not understandable,” he said.

Mr Khuhro urged the SAC to review its June 15 protest plan and promised that no innocent person would be discriminated against.

The PPP leader said that locals would get job opportunities in the housing societies being launched right from Hyderabad to Karachi for which legislation would be done.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2021