LARKANA: Pakistan Peoples Party Sindh president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has said the Centre is dragging its feet on the announcement of a new National Finance Commission (NFC) award and is bent on depriving Sindh of its due share in the federal divisible pool.
Mr Khuhro told journalists at his residence here on Sunday that the PML-N was following in the footsteps of dictators by denying autonomy to provinces and depriving them of their genuine rights but Sindh would never tire of raising its voice for its just and genuine rights.
He said the federal government and provinces had reached a consensus over a formula for NFC award and assurances were given at that time that the share of smaller provinces would rise each year but unfortunately, later the Centre went against its word.
He said that Sindh contributed 80 per cent to the federal pool but it got meagre share in return. The PPP would continue to raise voice for peoples’ rights and the federal government’s cold-shouldered attitude towards public issues, he said.
Mr Khuhro said the PPP would continue its protest against power outages and would hold demonstrations even during Ramazan. The party would also weigh other options if the federal government continued to turn a deaf ear to their protests, he said.
He said in answer to a question about the formation of an anti-PPP alliance led by Pir Pagaro that certain disgruntled political elements had gathered merely for a ‘photo session’. Such alliances were formed in the past and floundered soon afterwards, he said, adding that this alliance would meet the same fate as their predecessors.
About PML-N’s objection to the joint investigation team formed in the light of Supreme Court’s verdict in Panama Papers’ case, Mr Khuhro said that it was tantamount to objecting the institution of the Supreme Court. The apex court should take a suo motu notice of it.
He termed the government’s clampdown on social media an attempt to silence criticism of its poor performance and said if the government was against social media then it should first take action against prime minister’s daughter Maryam Nawaz.
He said that despite collecting billions of rupees in electricity bills from Sindh, the province was suffering 20-hour long loadshedding. Why the government was resorting prolonged and unscheduled outage even after paying billions of rupees in circular debit to its favourite Mansha group, he said.
Mr Khuhro said that even after injecting massive funds, there was zero production from Nandipur power project.
Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2017