HYDERABAD, Nov 9: The Sindh United Party has criticised the government decision to privatise the Qadirpur gas field and decided to host a meeting of nationalist parties in Jamshoro on Monday to evolve a joint strategy on the issue.

Speaking on the occasion, SUP chief Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah termed the federal government’s decision to dispose of Qadirpur gas field as an anti-Sindh move. He said that the federation had no right to dispose of resources of Sindh and warned that any move to privatise the gas field would be resisted.

The people of Sindh would have to take to streets to stop the auction of the gas field, Mr Shah said.

He urged the rulers to bring back the “dollars they have stashed away in foreign banks” to avert the financial crisis the country was facing.

He said that the government had dishonoured peoples’ mandate and lost their trust.

He called upon the nationalist parties to attend the Jamshoro meeting to evolve a joint strategy against the sale of the gas field.

Meanwhile, the Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party has announced that a procession will be taken out in Hyderabad on November 16 to protest against the government’s decision to privatise the gas field, adds our staff correspondent. “People did not give mandate to the Pakistan People’s Party to sell the future of our generations”, said STP chief Dr Qadir Magsi. Since 1988 successive regimes had disposed of assets of the country which gave nothing in return except joblessness, hunger, poverty and corruption, he said.

He said that the government should not sell productive assets and leave people at the mercy of multinational companies which sucked bone marrow of people to earn profit.

“Today we are facing crises of wheat, sugar and flour although we have an agrarian economy and it is only because of government policies”, Mr Magsi said.

He said that the STP wouldn’t allow the sale of the gas field because it believed that earning from Qadirpur’s gas or coal of Tharparkar should be spent on public welfare projects in Sindh.