HYDERABAD: Pakis­tan Peoples Party Sindh president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has defended newly-introduced amendments to local government law by Sindh Assembly and said the Sindh Assembly is within its rights to enact a law to decentralise the LG system.

Khuhro said at a press briefing at a party leader’s residence here on Wednesday before chairing a meeting of the party office bearers and parliamentarians on PPP’s planned protest against Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf on Dec 10 in Hyderabad that local government was a provincial subject and the Sindh Assembly was within its rights to enact a law whereby it had decentralised the LG system.

He said that every divisional headquarters would now have a corporation under which towns had been created. The number of towns in Karachi had been increased from 18 to 26 so that power was devolved to grassroots level and rural areas had been upgraded to urban spots, he said.

“What is the harm in declaring the rural areas as urban when there is already growing pressure on existing urban areas in the province? These areas might receive more facilities after becoming urban,” he said.

He dismissed criticism over election of mayor through secret ballot under the amended law, saying the same procedure was applied for the election of prime minister, chief minister and speaker. “We can’t make a person specific law in which it is written that only MQM’s mayors will be elected in Karachi and Hyderabad,” he said sarcastically.

He said that under Musharraf’s LG system Karachi was made one district with 15 million population while Hyderabad with 5m population was divided into four districts. Sindh governor had returned the amended LG bill but the assembly would resend it and it would automatically become a law if he sent it back again, he said.

He said the office of vice chairman had been improved to ensure participatory democracy. Funds would be transferred to union committees and councils as per procedure, he said.

MIRPURKHAS: Khu­hro said at a press conference on Wednesday that PPP was not rejoining PDM and said if the alliance had started long march about six months back people would have got rid of PTI government by now.

He said the PDM had thrown another lifeline to the present government by announcing that the march would be held in March next year.

He said that Sindh’s rights had been usurped by federal government which had rejected the province’s objections over census.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2021