KARACHI: Former Sindh chief minister Murad Ali Shah of the Pakistan Peoples Party on Wednesday questioned the performance of the caretaker provincial government and said that non-release of development funds tantamount to punishing the people of the province.

Speaking at a press conference at Bialwal House, Mr Shah said that work on development projects had been stopped due to non-release of funds. There was no justification for not releasing funds for schemes which were approved by the Sindh Assembly in the budget, he said.

“We had passed 947 schemes for the financial year 2023-24 and of them not even a single rupee has been released for school education, irrigation and energy projects,” he said.

“The caretakers are only supposed to do day-to-day routine work. We had left Rs112 billion for them. Now, when the FBR is saying that it has met the target of tax collection, it means that the government does not even have the issue of shortage of money. But the problem is that there is a lack of will to serve the people,” he added.

Accompanied by his former cabinet members including Sardar Shah, Saeed Ghani, Imtiaz Shaikh and others, he said PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had ensured as the foreign minister US $2 billion from the international community for the construction of houses for flood victims.

“We have secured more than $2 billion in funds from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Islamic Development Bank to rehabilitate flood affected areas, but as work on uplift schemes stopped, the commitment fee of funds received from international financial bodies is increasing” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2023