KARACHI: Chairman of the Pak Sarzameen Party, Mustafa Kamal, slammed the Center and provincial governments on Wednesday, accusing them for not resolving the civic issues in the city and acting like dictators.
“Democratic parties act like dictators after being elected,” Kamal said, speaking to media outside an accountability court, where he appeared alongside PPP Nisar Morai and Anis Qaimkhani In the relation concerning the unlawful allocation of plots at Clifton. “These chief ministers behave like dictators,” he added.
The former mayor of Karachi has said that the privileges and powers provided by the 18th Amendment should also filter down to the lower levels of governance.
While talking to the media, Kamal said Karachi is Sindh’s heart and Pakistan’s current style of politics can’t continue.
The PSP leader lamented that according to the National Finance Award the chief minister owns half of the province’s assets.
“The chief minister does not own this capital, it should be distributed at the local level,” Kamal said.
The PSP leader said that even the prime minister will say tomorrow that the center will allocate funds to one province and not to the other according to the same rules and regulations.
Talking of Karachi’s civic issues, he said the division of the metropolis was unacceptable, comparable to the division of Sindh.
Referring to Karachi as the “revenue engine” of the region, Kamal said the town faces cleanliness and power issues.
In July the Sindh High Court accepted former Karachi mayor Mustafa Kamal’s interim bail plea in relation to the case of unconstitutional plot allocation.
The petition claimed a notice had been given by an accountability court about the allocation of 198 plots to hawkers.
The former Mayor said he was ready to face the court case.
NAB accusations
In 2019, Kamal and 10 others had been booked by the anti-graft watchdog over allegedly unlawful selling and purchase of an amenity plot spread over more than 6,000 square yards near sea view.
The other suspects are Fazlur Rehman, Iftikhar Qaimkhani, Mumtaz Haider, Syed Nishat Ali and Nazir Zardari, former and current government officials, and Dawood, Zain Malik, Muhammad Yaqoob, Muhammad Irfan and Muhammad Rafiq, real estate developers.
NAB accused the suspects of selling a Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s owned amenity plot in Clifton to a private contractor to build a high-rise.
The plot of 6,632 square yards located between the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi and Bagh Ibne Qasim was to be given to sea-shell hawkers to set up their stalls, but it was illegally sold to builders at a price below the market, the watchdog says.
NAB contended that Kamal had approved the plot’s commercial status, after which it was sold to DJ Builders, who later sold it to Bahria City.
