Karachi: The leaders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Farooq Sattar and newly elected mayor Waseem Akhtar, on Thursday swept the streets with brooms to mark the 100-day cleanliness drive in this city, with a vow to do away with long pending sanitation problems.

Sattar said the mayor and his party would strive to make the living conditions better for a common resident of the city and they would do it over and above any politics.

He said, in the first phase of the 100-day drive, garbage heaps would be wiped out from 20 union councils jurisdictions and in the next phase additional 40 union councils would be cleaned. In the next phase, 80 more would be targeted, he said.

Sattar called on the provincial and federal governments to end the step motherly behaviour with Karachi that would contribute 70 per cent in the national exchequer in taxes and revenues. He said out of that hefty financial contribution nothing was being expended on this city which population exceeded to 25 million people.

Despite the remorselessness, Sattar said, the city would be cleaned of garbage in the next 100 days.

He called upon the students, traders and common citizens to join hands with them to help clean the city.

He also invited all the political parties to come to his assistance in order to revert this mega city to its old glory.

The MQM chief said that regardless to any financial help from the centre or the province, his party would transform the fate of the city on self-help basis.

He said that after the 100-day cleanliness drive, similar campaign would be launched in Hyderabad city.

Akhtar, the new mayor, who was released on bail in as many as 39 criminal and terrorism cases recently, was also scheduled to visit the regional party office of the Jamaat e Islami (JI), a political arch-rival of the MQM.

After disassociating themselves from the party founder and supremo Altaf Hussain in August this year, the MQM local leaders were trying to mend fences with the political opponents. Earlier, Akhtar visited the office of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PIT) to seek their help in running his mayoral office.

He appreciated the PTI leaders of their warm welcome and their assurances in making this largest city a better living place.

During the cleanliness campaign, the workers of the MQM came to a loggerhead with the loyalists of Hussain, who was disbanded by the Pakistani government to address his workers from London, where he lives in exile for decades.

However, Nadeem Nusrat, a deputy to Hussain called upon his workers to observe restrain and not creating problems for the MQM municipal works.