KARACHI, April 23: Dr Imran Farooq, convener of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, has appealed to President Gen Musharraf for immediate action to expedite payment to poor and affected families of Sindh who invested their life-long earnings into defunct finance companies that suddenly disappeared with billions of rupees invested by common people.

In a statement received here on Monday night, Dr Imran Farooq said that during the 1980s the Alliance Motors, the Samad Housing Corporation and others lured the poor people of urban and rural sindh, collected billions of rupees from them and disappeared.

He said the responsibility of dealing with the defunct finance companies was given by the Sindh High Court to the government representative, Mr Bashir Memon, who collected 300 and 33 million rupees after disposing off fifty properties.

Another amount of one hundred and seventy million rupees was collected from the sale of thirteen properties of the Samad Housing.

The government also succeeded in tracing out the proprietors of two other fraud finance companies who agreed to repay.

The claim papers of four thousand affected persons were scrutinized and the timeframe was finalized. But surprisingly, said Dr Farooq, the government policy changed.

Dr Farooq further said that on July 5 last year the NAB had formulated a positive policy and distributed four billion rupees to the sufferers of the cooperative societies in the Punjab, which was a laudable step.

He pointed out, however, that no action plan had been formulated for the payment to sufferers of similar nature in Sindh.

He urged the President to initiate immediate action in that regard according to the decisions taken by the relief committee formed in 1997.