His tone was calm, but his words carried weight, ‘If urban Sindh is denied its rights, the demand will turn into a necessity.’
Speaking on a private TV channel, Kamal painted a picture that was as clear as daylight. He said Sindh received 2,400 billion rupees this year under the NFC Award, 800 billion of which belonged to Karachi, yet the city did not even see a fraction worth calling its own. According to him, the federal government simply says, ‘All the money has gone to the Sindh Chief Minister ask him.’
Kamal added that Karachi’s problems have grown to a point where even the basic chores of local government, like garbage collection, have landed on the desk of the Chief Minister. “This,” he said, ‘is a textbook example of misplaced responsibility.’
He warned that if the PPP continues to ignore the rights of urban citizens, the chorus for a new province will only grow louder. In his words, ‘A province is born when rights are buried.’
Touching on financial matters, Kamal noted that the PPP once opposed agricultural tax, yet when the IMF pushed hard, ‘even the loudest critics found a new tune to sing.’ If that can happen, he said, then a constitutional amendment for new provinces is hardly unimaginable.
In the end, Kamal summed up his stance in a line that many are calling the take-away phrase of the night. We talk about a new province only when our rights are treated like an afterthought.
