Steps being taken to deal with challenges of street crime, ‘dacoit culture’: CM

KARACHI: Caretaker Sindh Chief Minister Justice Maqbool Baqar (Retd) Thursday said the government was putting all its efforts into overcoming the menace of street crime in Karachi and the dacoits in the riverine area.“A foolproof strategy is being devised and I am sure that the innovative and trusted mechanism will succeed us in the culmination of dacoit culture from the remaining parts of the province,” he concluded.

This he said while addressing the participants of the National Defence University 25th Security Workshop led by NDU head Major General Raza Azaid.

The participants include current and former members of provincial assemblies, senators, senior civil and military officers, academicians, as well as representatives of civil society.

Provincial caretaker ministers, Chief Secretary Dr Fakhre Alam, IG Police Riffat Mukhtar and provincial secretaries attended the program. The CM said that the purpose of such trips is to acquaint participants with the realities of the area they were visiting, exchange ideas with respect to security challenges, and build synergistic alliances that allow us to find solutions to shared problems.

“We are a country of over 200 million people, and by 2025 we will have 100 million people in the middle class, thus, making Pakistan’s middle class the 10th largest in the world,” he said and added that one of the major challenges for any government was to create opportunities and to particularly provide our youth with avenues for fulfillment and self-actualization.

Baqar said keeping in view the nexus between security and development, the federal government and the Sindh government were utilising significant resources towards improving access to education and healthcare, improving connectivity, and ensuring the provision of basic amenities particularly for the inhabitants of cosmopolitan cities like Karachi in order to cater for the long-awaited demand/need of the particular and working women, especially with respect to public transport.

He added that at the same time, the Sindh government has also endeavoured to bridge the gap between rural and urban by providing agricultural goods quick access to the markets.

The Government of Sindh and the Government of Pakistan have launched various BRT lines in Karachi, the CM said and added while the Green Line has become operational, works on the Yellow and Red Line BRTs were continuing at full throttle. Justice Baqar said that improvement in public transport has already begun to yield results given that women who were hitherto precluded from accepting employment in areas far from their homes were now increasingly accepting such jobs.

He added that similarly, students and individuals belonging to other segments were beginning to reap the benefits of such policies.

The Sindh govt has recently gone through the devastating floods of 2022 displacing the population in 23 districts, the interim CM said and added the Sindh government has, resultantly, had to ensure the rehabilitation of the people affected by the floods while also ensuring the rehabilitation of roads, water supply, and other infrastructural facilities. we have developed as Dhabeji SEZ, a Priority Project under CPEC - that the project would facilitate potential investors to establish new enterprises or transfer their facilities to Dhabeji SEZ, the CM said and added the project, under PPP, has been awarded for development and would be ready in a couple of years to attract industrial output of millions of dollars and about 100,000 jobs.

The Federal govt has approved two new economic zones on the recommendation of the Sindh govt at Naushehro Feroze Industrial Park, and National Industrial Park and Bholari Special The CM said that the Sindh government has established Education City over an area of 8,921 acres to establish more than twenty educational institutes to equip youth with modern education.

“We have established the Business Registration Portal (business.sindh.gov.pk) to enable the businessmen to register their business online with the concerned departments and SESSI. “We have waived the fee for registration with the Labour department,” he said. Earlier, the CM, the home minister, the minister education, the chief secretary, and the IG Police answered the questions asked by the participants of the workshop.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023