KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah said on Saturday the administration needed to be overhauled completely because police officers and civil servants were transferred by interim government on a massive scale in violation of the rules which barred changes after announcement of election date.
He said the caretaker government did not have the mandate to make changes in the provincial administration but it transferred many officers with the sole aim of getting PPP candidates defeated in the elections.
“We are grateful to the people, women in particular, who came forward to help foil the designs of our opponents,” Mr Shah remarked.
The chief minister was responding to points of order raised in the Sindh Assembly by Imtiaz Shaikh of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) regarding killing of political workers in Sanghar and Khairpur and complaint of Prisons Minister Manzoor Wasan against police officials refusing to register cases against the provincial chief of the PML-F, Pir Sadruddin Shah Rashdi, over the killing of four PPP members.
Mr Shah said he couldn’t pay attention to the changes made in the administration earlier because he was busy in preparing the provincial budget.
He said he had asked the deputy inspector-general (DIG) of police of Mirpurkhas to probe into the tragic incident of Sanghar and submit a report to him within three days.
The chief minister said the performance of police had deteriorated sharply because the interim government had violated the rules by transferring even the superintendents of police (SPs) and station house masters (SHOs).
Earlier, Mr Shaikh said that some people attacked a house of PML-F worker Abdul Sattar with rockets, allegedly with the aid of police, and destroyed it. A man was killed in the attack.
He said the opposition parties were being victimised just as they were in the 1980s and 1990s. He also quoted a newspaper report which said incompetent officials of other departments were being inducted into police.
Responding to the allegations levelled by the PML-F leader, Mr Wasan said that on May 16 a strike was observed on the call of the PML-F and a procession was also taken out. A man, who was shutting down a petrol pump, was killed.
Three PPP workers — Shamsuddin, Nadeem Wasan and Suleman Gopang — were also killed. Later Dr Imtiaz Wasan was kidnapped but the police declined to register a first information report (FIR) as per the wishes of the complainant. The police, however, registered an FIR on their own.
He alleged that the PML-F leaders were killing their own workers and blaming others to malign the PPP government.
Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani said inquiry should be instituted against the officials “working to destabilise the government”.