Karachi: The Sindh Government will establish its own Evacuee Trust Property Board to manage the evacuee properties in the province, including religious and educational trusts, belonging to Hindus and Sikhs who had migrated to India after partition in 1947.
The bill to constitute the provincial Evacuee Trust Property Board will soon be presented in Sindh Assembly for passage after approval of the proposed law by the provincial cabinet.
The Secretary for Minorities Affairs’ Department informed this to a meeting jointly chaired by Sindh Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah and retired senior police Dr Sohaib Suddle to review progress on ending illegal occupation of the properties in the province belonging to the religious minorities.
The Minorities Affairs’ secretary informed the meeting that the federal government had yet to devolve to the province the Evacuee Trust Property Board despite passage of 18th Constitutional Amendment envisaging devolution of such powers to the provinces.
Hate content
The officials of Sindh Education Department informed the meeting that all hate content, which could have offended the people of any religious community, had been removed from the curricula being taught from Class 1 to Class 12 in schools and colleges of the Sindh province. The Sindh government has also given due representation to the religious minorities to the curriculum formulation committee in the province.
The divisional commissioners who attended the meeting via the video link were asked to submit a compliance report within 15 days to show that all encroachments had been removed from the land pertaining to the members of the religious minorities in the province. The same report will then be submitted to the Supreme Court.
Sindh chief secretary informed the meeting that the Sindh government had established a separate department to resolve the problems of the religious minorities in the province. The Sindh government’s annual budget also contained separate allocation for repairing the worship sites of religious minorities in the province. He said the Sindh government had also issued order to disburse salary in advance to its Hindu employees in view of their upcoming Diwali festival.
