Pakistan: Sindh chief minister believes East India Company still exists in his province

Karachi: Though the East India Company ceased to exist 147 years ago in the Indian sub-continent, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah believes that the colonial-era foreign trading entity still exists in his province.

Speaking at a press conference here at Chief Minister House on Tuesday, Syed Murad Ali Shah said the federal government was behind the presence of the East India Company-type organisational arrangement in Sindh for remotely carrying out development works in the province.

He said the presence of federal government-owned Sindh Infrastructure Development Company Limited (SIDCL) was similar to establishing an East India Company-like commercial entity in his province to carry out federally-funded development works in Sindh.

He said the presence of SIDCL in the province meant that the federal government didn’t trust his government.

“Formation of this East India Company in Sindh is simply unacceptable to us,” he said.

“I had last year strongly objected to this East India Company-like intervention in Sindh. My concerns are valid as this company is working with complete disregard for actual requirements of the province,” he said.

He complained that the federal government had started directly carrying out development works in the province at the micro-level without consulting his government that is necessary to prevent duplication of work both by the federal and provincial governments.

He lamented that the federal government had not announced any new road sector development scheme for Sindh to be included in the upcoming federal budget for new financial year. Instead, the federal government has announced 11 such new road development projects for Punjab.

His government had recommended 17 development schemes to the federal government for Sindh to be included in the next financial year’s Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), he said but none of them had been approved.

He said the upcoming PSDP contained just two development schemes for the province that were also not new.

He said he didn’t have any objection to allocating more funds for Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but the federal government at the same time shouldn’t ignore the development of Sindh.