KARACHI, April 10: Media Cell of the Pakistan People’s Party has released a research report which claims that a gang of front-men belonging to several parties forming the ruling clique have a hand in turning Karachi a ‘street crime city’ and destroying its environment and infrastructure.

The report, released here on Tuesday, accused the ruling coalition of plundering the national wealth by occupying the economy. It observed that in spite of a decision taken by the government’s policy-making institutions to curb illegal allotment and a court-declared ban being in place in this regard, the ruling parties were continuing with their looting spree targeting prime state land while permission for illegal high-rises were being issued by the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA). “A jungle of concrete structures has thus created serious power, water and sewerage crises,” it noted.

The KESC files showing sanctioning of fresh electricity load over the past seven years could reveal how and why citizens were being punished through load-shedding and power failures, the report stated.

Citing a recent survey putting the number of people in Karachi having been deprived of their cellphones in the first quarter of the current year at 16,482, it also referred to other figures which showed that 2,936 vehicles were snatched from their owners. The number of robbed cellphones during January, February and March appeared to be 5,359, 5,319 and 5,804 respectively, and most of the cases of such street crimes were reported from Gulshan, Saddar, Gulberg, Shah Faisal, Laiquatabad and some other towns.

The report indicated that claims of honest police officials and the dutiful institutions showed that a particular mafia was at work with the support of functionaries at the highest level because when police would arrest the criminals red-handed, they were often asked to set the culprits free.