KARACHI: Caretaker Chief Minister Sindh Justice (retd) Maqbool Baqar said that government was putting all its efforts into overcoming menace of street crime in Karachi and dacoits in riverine areas.

“Foolproof strategy is being devised and I am sure that innovative and trusted mechanism will succeed us in culmination of dacoit culture from remaining parts of province,” he said while addressing participants of National Defence University’s 25th security workshop.

Participants include current and former members of provincial assemblies, senators, senior civil and military officers, academicians as well as representatives of civil society. Caretaker ministers, Chief Secretary Dr Fakhre Alam, IG Police Rifat Mukhtar and provincial secretaries attended programme.

Interim CM said that purpose of such trips is to acquaint participants with realities of area they were visiting, exchange ideas with respect to security challenges and build synergistic alliances that allow us to find solutions to shared problems. “We are country of over 200 million people and by 2025 we will have 100 million people in middle class, thus, making Pakistan’s middle class 10th largest in world,” he said and added that one of major challenges for any government was to create opportunities and to particularly provide our youth with avenues for fulfilment and self-actualisation.

Justice (retd) Baqar said that keeping in view nexus between security and development, federal government and Sindh government were utilising significant resources towards improving access to education and healthcare, improving connectivity and ensuring provision of basic amenities particularly for inhabitants of cosmopolitan cities like Karachi in order to cater for long-awaited demand/need of particular and working women, especially with respect to public transport. He said that at same time, Sindh government has also endeavoured to bridge gap between rural and urban by providing agricultural goods quick access to markets.

Government and Centre have launched various BRT lines in Karachi, he said and added while Green Line has become operational, Work on Yellow and Red Line BRTs were continuing at full throttle. He said that improvement in public transport has already begun to yield results given that women who were hitherto precluded from accepting employment in areas far from their homes were now increasingly accepting such jobs. He added that similarly, students and individuals belonging to other segments were beginning to reap benefits of such policies.

we have developed as Dhabeji SEZ, priority project under CPEC-that project would facilitate potential investors to establish new enterprises or transfer their facilities to Dhabeji SEZ, he said and added project under PPP has been awarded for development and would be ready in couple of years to attract industrial output of millions of dollars and about 100,000 jobs.

Earlier, Interim CM, Home Minister, Minister Education, Chief Secretary and IG Police answered questions asked by participants of workshop.

Published in The Daily National Courier, November, 03 2023

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