LARKANA: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Sindh, has announced its plan to hold a ‘long march’ against fragile law and order situation and other issues relating to the province.

JUI-F Sindh general secretary Maulana Rashid Mehmood Soomro, addressing a press conference in Naushahro Feroz on Sunday, said the long march would be started on October 22 and continue till November 2.

He appealed to the people of Sindh to profusely participate in the march to raise their voice against “dacoit culture”, the issue of the Sindh’s islands and resources and other problems.

He said government hospitals lacked proper facilities and hygienic environment despite huge allocations, and highlighted other issues like the unsatisfactory state of education sector, murder of merit, illegal occupation of Sindh’s land and usurpation of its natural resources.

He held all successive governments ruling the province over 76 years responsible for all ills. “This warrants a serious thought at this juncture to bring in an alternative leadership,” he said, adding that the new leadership must have the pain for the masses.

He observed that every citizen was today worried about food, power, gas and other essentially required items of daily use. “The common man is unable even to have two-square meals,” he said, and claimed: “A solution only lies in the rule of religious parties”.

Regarding government’s policy of expelling all aliens from the country, Maulana Soomro said those living here without any documents should be sent back to their home countries. But, he added, different political parties could have their own point of view on the issue. Some of them could have reservations over the methodology being adopted for sending such people packing.

He noted that the military establishment, JUI-F, caretaker government, MQM-P and even nationalists were of the same opinion about expelling those living in the country without legal documents.

He said JUI-F’s stance in this regard was very clear but it also disagreed with the methodology.

Peeping into the past, he said Pakistan’s airbases had been used against Afghanistan during the Musharraf era.

“Amidst the situation around us, if we make Afghanistan our enemy, we will be pushed to isolation,” he warned, and recalled that the decisions taken in haste had always dipped Pakistan in difficulties.

Maulana Soomro said the JUI-F was the only religious party that had stood by nationalists on many issues of Sindh like Kalabagh dam and Sindh’s islands, etc.

He said his party had in very clear terms stood by their demand of expelling outsiders from Sindh.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2023