KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has said that the people of Pakistan have given mandate to the present assemblies for a period of five years. "Everyone has to respect the mandate, therefore the rumors of the proposal of dissolving assemblies is unfound and baseless."

He said this while talking to media just after performing grounding breaking ceremony of National Highway (N-5) Road from Jinnah Terminal to Quaidabad Flyover today. He was accompanied by Minister for Local Government Jam Khan Shoro, Special Assistant to CM Waqar Mehdi and others.

Replying to a question, the chief minister said that Panama Leakes must be probed independently but "it doesn’t mean to disrupt the democratic system under this pretext," he said and recalled "the people of Pakistan have paid big price for democracy, therefore we won't allow {anybody} to derail it {system}.

Replying to a question that there is a proposal to dissolve the assemblies for fresh mandate, the chief minister said that it is totally a baseless and wishful thinking. "The rumor- mongering keep attempting to roll back democracy but they would never succeed in their nefarious designs," he said categorically.

Earlier, the chief minister accompanied by Local Government Minister Jam Khan Shoro performed ground breaking ceremony of rehabilitation/ reconstruction of about three kilometer National Highway (N-5) from Jinnah Terminal Flyover to Quaidabad. This is Rs785.217 million project and likely to be completed within one year. The contract of the project has been assigned to FWO.

The National Highway (N-5) is one of the two major highways of Karachi leading to Thatta /Hyderabad connected with Shahrah-e-Faisal near Jinnah Terminal. The road serves not only to the heavy commercial and public transport leading to Thatta, Hyderabad and onwards but also serves to the traffic leading to major industrial sectors located in the eastern side of Karachi like port Qasim, Export Processing Zone, Karachi Steel Mills, Landhi and Bin Qasim Industrial areas beside also connected to the Karachi Port with Port Qasim.

The chief minister said that there was an impression that the government was constructing new roads but has ignored the old ones. "This is not true we are rehablitating the old roads and N-5 project is one of it," he said.