‘Federal govt going to give merely Rs1.75bn for Karachi’s uplift against promise of Rs162bn’

The federal government is going to allocate only Rs1.75 billion for the development of Karachi in the upcoming budget in spite of the earlier announcement of a special development package worth Rs162 billion for the city by the prime minister.Sindh Adviser on Information and Law Barrister Murtaza Wahab said this on Friday while addressing a news conference. He asked the federal government how it would arrange funds for the Rs162 billion special package for Karachi if it did not allocate them in the budget.Wahab said people of Karachi had honoured the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the elections by voting for it but the PTI-led federal government was mocking the city in return. He said the Sindh government was not taken on board by the Centre when it announced development funds for Karachi and the rest of Sindh.Wahab claimed that the federal government was going to allocate Rs675 billion for the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the upcoming financial year that included 302 development schemes.Of the 302 schemes, only 19 belonged to Sindh and Rs37 billion would be allocated for them, he said, adding that the new proposed document of the PSDP did not contain any allocation for the proposed university in Hyderabad announced by the federal government.Referring to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and the Grand Democratic Alliance, the information adviser said the political parties belonging to the province that had allied themselves with the PTI in the Centre should raise the issue of allocating a mere five per cent of funds of the entire PSDP for the development of Sindh.He remarked that such less allocation of funds for the development of Sindh was tantamount to trampling on the rights of its people. The prime minister should fulfil the promises he had made with the people at the time of campaigning before the last general elections, he said.Wahab also claimed that the Sindh government was yet to receive any notification from the federal government which informed it that the latter had once again took control of the city’s three major public sector hospitals, the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) and the National Institute of Child Health.The budget of the JPMC and NICVD was only Rs70 billion when their control was previously with the federal government, he said, adding that as the Sindh government managed them, the budget of these hospitals was increased to Rs12 billion.

from The News International - Karachi http://bit.ly/2W2UToD