KARACHI - Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar on Saturday said that Karachi did not want political point scoring anymore but the city needed practical steps for resolution of its issues.
Talking to media outside K-Electric office after a meeting with the KE management, he said the situation this time was different because all the relevant stakeholders including federal, provincial governments and the cantonment boards were taking their responsibilities seriously.
The federal minister said that at present all attention was focused on Karachi. He said that issue of power outages has been discussed in detail with the K-Electric management. The Minister said that the option of whether the powers to run the affairs of the utility supply company should remain with the owners or be taken over by the government would be discussed.
“We have been listening about the projects of K-IV and Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) for a long time but the problems have not been resolved because no one has complete authority”, he said.
Asad Umar said that K-IV and KCR were the needs of the city. He said the sewerage system in the city was not functioning properly and encroachments had been established on the rain drains.
To a question, Asad Umar said that he was glad that at last Shahbaz Sharif’s heart ached for Karachi. He said Shahbaz Sharif, instead of visiting the affected areas went to Zardari House and returned after doing political point scoring.
Separately, in a tweet message, the minister said that Pakistan’s winning streak had started after successes in fight against COVID-19 and revival plan of Karachi.
“All elements of the state-Civil, military, federal, provincial-came together to deal with Covid-19 and same approach to deal with perennial problems of Karachi,” he said.
He said success against corona had been globally recognized and now revival plan of the largest city of the country was indicating that Pakistan’s winning streak had started.
Asad Umar said the Prime Minister Imran Khan was going to announce the biggest development package for Karachi in history of the country. “This historic development work for Karachi will be executed with joint coordination of the center and the province,” he added.
He said no politics would hinder the development works for uplift of the people and soon such development works in other areas of Sindh would also be initiated.