Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui on Tuesday lashed out at the Sindh government for appointing “non-local officers” as administrators in cities across the province. Addressing a press conference, he began by saying that the party had certain “concerns”. “Having concerns is not a sin because things have been announced on multiple occasions but nothing has ever happened.” He added that the party would not comment on the funds allocated for the metropolis under the Karachi Transformation Plan, a financial package worth Rs1.1 trillion. “Some people are conducting a post-mortem of what is being given. We don’t want to do that,” he said in an apparent reference to the PPP. “The MQM-P strongly condemns the decision to appoint non-resident officers as administrators in the cities of Sindh, including Karachi,” the coordination committee of the party had said in a statement. “What was our demand? Our demand was that the city’s administrator should be a person living in Karachi, someone who is able to understand the woes of the people. Someone who is not politically affiliated with anyone,” said Maqbool during today’s press conference. “We had the same demand for Hyderabad, Larkana and Sukkur. This is the way to do things in a civilised society. When we expressed our concerns, we were told that it was not appropriate to appoint a separate administrator and that is why the deputy commissioners were given this responsibility. Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui also lashed out at the federal government for not being stern enough with the provincial government. “They will be absolved of all of their sins, but we are questioned over a few comments,” he said, adding that nobody was concerned about their criminal past. He added that the PPP had divided Sindh into two separate pieces: “One which spends and one which earns. And you, not us, divided the province into two on ethnic grounds.”
