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DADU, June 6: Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz chairman Basheer Qureshi has said that his party will organise a sit-in on the National Highway in the Sukkur area on June 24 and will stop vehicular traffic to Punjab to protest against enforced disappearance of nationalist leaders.
He was talking to journalists at a hunger strike camp here on Wednesday. JSQM activists are observing token hunger strike to pressurise the authorities to release missing nationalist leaders believed to be in the custody of intelligence agencies.
Mr Qureshi said that the agencies and police were torturing JSQM general secretary Dr Sohrab Sarki, Asif Baladi and other nationalist leaders who had been picked up from different areas of Sindh.
He said that they would continue struggle till the release of detained leaders and activists of the JSQM and other nationalist groups. He demanded that the detained leaders and activists be produced in the court of law.
He said that the government was not paying attention to the problems of people and held the Sindh government and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement responsible for May 12 Karachi killings.
USAID PROJECT: The USAID's Pakistan District Work Project has been launched here on Wednesday with the inauguration of its district assistance office.
EDO, finance, Noor Mohammad Leghari, and the chief of the USAID programme for Pakistan, Michael Sinclair, jointly inaugurated the office. A large numbers of district council members, union council nazims, government officers and activists of NGOs were present.
Mr Sinclair said in his speech that the three-year project costing $26 million dollars was aimed at to build administrative and financial management and capacity of district governments for better service delivery and sustainable development.
He said that in Sindh, the project had been launched in Dadu and Sukkur whereas it was working in two districts of Punjab i.e. Sialkot and Khanewal and in Mansehra (NWFP) and Lasbela (Balochistan).
Mr Sinclair said that targets of sustainable development could not be achieved without active participation of stakeholders and through the project, the stakeholders would be given technical and financial support to help them plan in an appropriate manner.
He deplored that funds for development projects remained unutilised and lapsed because of faults in planning.
He said that training had been imparted to government officers, planners and nazims about the new accounting model to give them understanding about preparation of budgets.
He said that under the project, schools, basic health units and government offices would also be improved to some extent and hoped that the project would help district governments to improve their performance and achieve targets of development.
