Hyderabad residents have expressed their serious concern over non-provision of municipal and other basic services to the people and demanded of immediate measures for resolving the issues affecting routine life of the city. Speakers of a conference, titled "Basic public issues of Hyderabad" held here the other day by Hyderabad City Welfare Organisation at press club, pointed out that the residents of Hyderabad had to face problems like poor sanitation, dilapidated roads and streets, chocked drainage, contaminated piped water, power outages and corruption of concerned officials.
District President PML-N Hyderabad, Hanif Siddiqui at this occasion stressed on joint strategy developed by all political parties to do away with the problems being encountered by the citizens and said his party was striving for solving the issues and intended to start a protest movement in collaboration with stakeholders for getting resolved the issues pertaining to Hyderabad Development Authority, WASA, Hesco and other government departments.
He said Hesco was a commercial entity working under the federal government and policies of its incumbent administration were earning bad name for the federal government. He said that his party leadership raised Hesco related issues with high command and soon CEO Hesco would be relieved of the responsibilities. Trader leader and focal person Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Zia ud Din, said linguistic divide parted Hyderabad into lingual blocks while the city has politically and socially alienated resulting in escalation of hardship for common people. The interest of the party which claims representing the city was reflected of the fact that it did not bother to attend the conference regarding issues of the populace, he said sarcastically.
Amir Jamaat Islami Hyderabad, Hafiz Tahir Majeed, said once the streets of the city were washed daily and now people did not have potable water while the water being supplied was heavily contaminated and unsafe for human consumption. He also questioned the exercise of local government elections and said when powers were not to be given to local representatives why million of rupees were spent on elections?
Syed Kamal Shah of Pakistan Peoples' Party claimed that his party would change the entire city during its current tenure and said leadership of PPP had always raised the issues of Hyderabad and taken every step to resolve the problems. He said it was PPP which staged mass protest against excesses of Hesco.
On issue of sacked employees of HAD he said PPP would not support the employees who were receiving their salaries at home but the legible employees would be restored soon. President HCWO, Aslam Deswali, said Hyderabad was a vibrant and model city and rightly called Paris of Sindh in the past but today residents of the city were encircled with multiple problems. Highlighting the objectives of the conference he said the conference was aimed at collecting different stakeholders to discuss the issues and to reach at any sustainable and effective way forward. He appealed Chief Justice Pakistan Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, who himself was a resident of Hyderabad, to take the notice of the situation.