LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) ameer Sirajul Haq has rejected the Sindh Local Government Act and called for a consensus of all stakeholders on it. “Jamaat-e-Islami will not accept the anti-democratic act aimed at allowing the control of a single political section over the majority of the economic center of the country,” he said on Monday, addressing the workers. from JI to Mansoora. Expressing concern over the Sindh government’s “stubbornness” over the recently passed law, he said pushing people to the wall and ignoring their demands raised serious questions about the PPP’s democratic credentials. He said residents of the port city run by JI Karachi Chapter had been protesting the local government law for 18 days but the provincial government was not ready to change the law which was against the constitution and the spirit of grassroots democracies.
Thanks to the recent law, he said, more than 30 million Karachi residents were supposed to elect their mayor without checks and balances on educational institutions, hospitals and local government transfers. The Chief Minister, he added, has taken over all the powers of local government officials in the LG Sindh Act. He said the people of Karachi were demanding their just rights. The city, he regretted, had turned into a heap of garbage due to the neglect of the provincial and federal governments. Mini-Pakistan has been reduced to the plethora of problems as even the majority of the residents have been deprived of the drinking water facility.
Speaking of Baluchistan, he said the government had not honored the agreement he had signed with the leader of the “Gawadar movement” Maulana Hidat-ur-Rahman. The government, he added, has gone its way of betraying the masses with false promises. He said residents of Gwadar were again being forced to take to the streets. He warned the government against ignoring the demands of the residents of Gwadar. He said that the federal and provincial governments have failed to address the deprivations of the people of Balochistan and this could create serious problems for the rulers.