HYDERABAD: Sindh Senior Minister for Information, Transport and Mass Transit Sharjeel Inam Memon has said that provincial government is committed to ensuring women empowerment in line with the vision of assassinated Pakistan Peoples Party chairperson and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

He was speaking at a ceremony held here on Saturday to distribute 200 free e-bikes among women at a local hotel. MPA Imdad Pitafi, Deputy Mayor Saghir Qureshi and PPP Hyderabad General Secretary Wasim Rajput also addressed the ceremony.

The minister said that the government was endeavouring to support women in every possible manner. He said PPP believed that women should be empowered so that they should lead their families. “It was Benazir Bhutto who had laid the foundation of the First Women Bank in the country,” he recalled.

Mr Memon said that a programme liked the free bikes distribution had not been witnessed anywhere in the word, and added that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had also made a similar point while inaugurating the Shahrah-i-Bhutto a day earlier.

Sharjeel Memon says PPP committed to empowering women, recounts party’s great achievements under Bhuttos’ leadership

World’s largest housing project

Sharjeel Memon pointed out that PPP’s housing project for flood-affected families is world’s largest housing programme under which 2.1m homes are being built and their ownership documents have been registered in the name of these families’ womenfolk.

Regarding healthcare, he said that cyber knife surgery was being offered in only 15 countries of the world and that Sindh is the offering this facility free of cost. Due to these great PPP projects in Sindh, he added, Pakistan is now being counted among top countries offering such facilities to its people.

He said that the federal government had sought Sindh government’s assistance in establishing a centre of autism. Even Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has asked Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal to learn from Sindh’s experiences of running autism-related facilities, he added.

The minister said that the PPP government had invested $1m in Thar coal project with the aim of benefiting the entire country through provision of inexpensive electricity.

PPP govt’s big achievements

The senior minister remarked that no one could cast an evil eye against Pakistan only because PPP founder chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had made it invincible by making the country an atomic power. “Today’s regional conditions are reflective of the fact that Pakistan holds a special place in the comity of nations,” he said.

Mr Memon also mentioned the 18th Constitutional Amendment, NFC Award and BISP initiative as some of the major achievements of the PPP.

He promised opening of new bus routes in Hyderabad after Eidul Azha.

About the e-bikes programme, he said that initially around 150 licences were registered in Sindh, but since the launch of this initiative, around 25,000 licences had been issued to women. He said that this step would go a long way in shaping the lives of youth so that they should not get distracted by anything socially negative for them.

He said that he did not even know any woman enrolled for this support. He said that any woman deserving and seeking the free Pink Scooty should only have a valid driving licence.

He cautioned that these bikes could be impounded if any male was seen driving it. He said these bikes could not be sold for seven years after it was issued to a woman.

He disputed a list of alleged drug addicts doing the rounds in social media along with the claim that they were being supplied narcotics by arrested drug dealer Anmol alias Pinky. He said that police were investigating the case.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2026