MITHI: Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) chief Senator Sirajul Haq has said that the successive rulers have failed to play any role to mitigate the miseries of the drought-hit Tharis for the past many years despite incurring severe drought and subsequent deaths of thousands of infants and pregnant women.

Speaking to reporters after inaugurating the buil­d­ing of a newly-constructed 60-bed Al-Khidmat Founda­tion Hospital in Mithi on Thursday, he observed that had transparent accountability been undertaken against the corrupt and plunderers, most of those sitting in parliaments would have been languishing in jails, as according to him, most of them had left no stone unturned to push the country towards backwardness for their petty interests.

He maintained that ‘selective’ accountability by the state agencies and institutions would serve no purpose. Instead it would create doubts in the minds of people who were already feeling a sense of insecurity due to misrule by the “naive and incompetent” rulers imposed on them.

The JI emir said the rulers in the name of the so-called accountability had only created a mess and people of the world were laughing at their policies because they did not have any acumen to run the affairs of the government.

The JI chief lashed out at the federal and Sindh governments for “making a mockery of the residents of Thar”. They failed to make any long-term plans or policies to bring a real change in their lifestyle and bring the district at par with the rest of the country, he added.

He said the recent visit by Prime Minister Imran Khan was of no use for Tharis, as according to him, being the premier of the country, he miserably failed to anno­unce any relief package for the drought-hit people of Thar­par­kar.

He said the Sindh government, instead of saving the lives of Thais by providing them facilities of qua­li­ty healthcare and drinking water, pocketed huge funds meant for the welfare of Tharis.

Lashing out at the PPP government in Sindh, the JI chief said that “incompetent and corrupt rulers” had turned the entire province into ruins; they were busy in corrupt practices and saving their corrupt leaders.

He said that it was a matter of shame for the rulers that people of Thar were dying of hunger and starvation or were forced to commit suicide due to abject poverty and they (rulers) were serving their own interests.

Mr Siraj said the JI stepped in the desert region with a lot of relief packages, including a 60-bed hospital, where people of all communities were getting healthcare facilities without any discrimination of caste, colour and creed.

He said there had been exemplary communal harmony in the desert district for centuries and urged that there was still need to forge more unity among the Hindus and Muslims.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2019