KARACHI, Jan 13: Founder of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement Altaf Hussain has appealed to President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and the federal government to arrange for shelter to the people rendered homeless by the October 8, 2005 earthquake in the NWFP and Azad Kashmir.

In a statement issued from London, he regretted that hundreds of thousands of such victims were still living in the open, exposed to all sorts of hazards, and many of them had already perished.

They needed shelter on an emergency basis, he added.

He reiterated that his party was struggling for the poor and oppressed people of the country, and not for the benefit of a few families.

He called for rooting out the corrupt political culture from the country so that the 98 per cent downtrodden people could benefit from their resources which today were controlled by a small group of selected people.

The MQM, he said, wanted an end to discrimination to enable each and every citizen to have equal rights and could live comfortably.

Mr Hussain made it clear that the present unjust system could never be replaced through slogans, rather through sincere efforts and selfless service by each one of us.

“The law swings into action against the poor and the helpless but those who loot and plunder the country are allowed to go scat free,” he remarked, and cited the people who broke the country into two and were held responsible in the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report as some of them.

“None of the army generals, responsible for East Pakistan fall, has been punished and this is a tragedy,” he regretted, adding that no punishment had yet been prescribed for plunderers of the nation’s wealth.