Karachi: The leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Imran Khan, who was on a pre-election visit to this financial capital of the country yesterday said tax-evading Pakistanis have invested more than 800 billion rupees (Dh28 billion) in real estate in the Gulf because of flawed tax policies as well as the ruling class’s practice of investing abroad.

He was addressing a gathering of Karachi traders and members of the business community about the situation in the country, while raising funds for the Karachi chapter of a cancer hospital named after his mother.

“Just imagine, we are among the five largest givers of charity in the world, but at the same time we are the poorest tax payers,” he said.

Khan said investors knew that, if the rulers of the country were investing abroad to evade tax, they too needed to take the same route.

“People don’t pay tax because they know that their hard earned money would be funnelled to Panama,” he said referring to the pending corruption case against the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Khan reiterated his slogan of “change” saying it had become inevitable now in Karachi.

He said reform could not be implemented in Karachi unless the due powers were delegated to the elected mayor of the city. Khan said, despite mayoral elections being held in Karachi, executive powers were not devolved to the municipal offices by the government thus rendering the mayoral office ineffective.

“In which country, the legislator undertake the development work,” he asked to emphasis the need of transferring municipal power to the mayor from the provincial government.

The PTI chief also came heavily on the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led government in the province that inclined to hold as much power as it could. Referring the ongoing row between the provincial government and the federal government over transferring Sindh police chief A.D. Khawaja, for his uprightness and disallowing the government to encroach his office.

Khan said that his party made the police chief independent and now no one can meddle with the office of the inspector general of police (IGP). The police reforms, thus introduced in Khyber Pakthnkhaw (KP) province, were a catalyst of change, he said.

“But here in Sindh, a deputy superintendent has been posted without the knowledge of the IG,” Khan scornfully said.

Highlighting the good governance in the PTI-led government in KP, Khan said that some of his relatives, who were in the construction business, were interested to take up some projects in the province but he out rightly turned them down.

Khan later also called on Mumtaz Bhutto, chief of a Sindhi nationalist party and a potential electable from the northern Sindh districts.

Later, he had to see an association of the Memons, an affluent community, before addressing a political rally at Landhi this evening.