HYDERABAD, Jan 22: The Hyderabad chapter of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) has urged the government to make Hyderabad one of the stations of the Thar Express train.

In a statement issued here on Sunday, the forum leaders, Advocate Zafar Rajput, Jalal Leghari and Advocate Abbas Jafri, criticized the announcement of the railway minister, Shamim Haider, that the train would only go to Mirpurkhas from Karachi before proceeding to India.

They said the Hyderabad railway station was an important junction in Sindh and a large number of people who had migrated from India were living there. They said the people of Hyderabad would have to go to Karachi or Mirpurkhas to board that train for India.

They demanded from President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to declare Hyderabad as a station to facilitate the people of the second largest district of the province with a population of two million.

SEA: Professor Liaquat Aziz was elected as chairman of the newly formed Sindh Employees Alliance in its first elections held here on Friday.

A meeting of the alliance

was attended by a large number of teachers and employees

of various educational institutions.

Office bearers from 14 organizations attended the meeting which approved rules and regulations of the alliance.

The meeting elected Dr Saleem Chandio as general secretary, Mohammad Hanif Baloch as information secretary, Professor Mushtaq Mirani as finance secretary and Professor Tariq Mansoor Qureshi as office secretary.

It decided to include one member of each organization in the executive committee.

The meeting adopted several resolutions demanding increase of budgetary allocation for education to six per cent of GDP, new educational policy on scientific lines and constitutional protection of the jobs of all government employees.