DADU: Sindh United Party chairman Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah has warned that if the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party does not finally end its nine-year-long “corruption spree”, it will destroy everything in the province.

PPP MPAs and MNAs were least interested in making new laws for the welfare of people and the state as they had zeroed in all their energies on only making money through corruption and contriving new ways to maximise their ill-gotten wealth, said Mr Shah while addressing a public gathering in Sehwan Sharif late on Wednesday night.

He cautioned that if corruption was not eradicated it would render the country unsafe and weak from within. No government dep­ar­t­ment was delivering its assigned job in an adequate manner and there was little hope in Sindh Chief Minis­ter Syed Murad Ali Shah of correcting the situation, he said.

Murad was a powerless chief minister who could not launch even one mega project in the province before the end of his party’s rule. About Rs50 billion worth of corruption had been committed in Sindh, especially in Jamshoro district, during last nine years of PPP rule, he claimed.

Mr Shah said that rampant corruption coupled with nepotism had dest­roy­ed the province’s economy and failed service delivery in all government departments.

He said the terrorists and their facilitators involved in the suicide blast at Qalan­dar’s shrine in Sehwan were still at large, which had heightened fears of repeat of a similar crime at Sufi shrines in the province.

He said that extremism had weakened the very foundations of the state. It was necessary to get rid of the evil as religious bigotry and the state could not go hand in hand, he added.

Mr Shah said that 400,000 Burmese, Bengalis and others belonging to various nationalities, who had been living in Karachi for years, were a burden on the province’s economy. The government should take steps to repatriate them to their native countries, he said.

He appealed to Muslim countries to take measures for the protection of lives of innocent Muslim women, children and men in Myanmar.

SUP leaders Roshan Bur­iro, Idris Chandio and Mir Moula Bux Leghari also spoke at the gathering.

Earlier, the SUP leaders and activists formally ann­ou­n­ced launching a drive against PPP government’s corruption after visiting the shrine of Hazrat Lal Shah­baz Qalandar.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2017