KARACHI: The provincial assembly of Sindh on Wednesday passed a resolution against a presidential ordinance that created the Pakistan Islands Development Authority to focus on several landmasses along the country’s coastline that otherwise form part of its two southern provinces.
The resolution was in line with an announcement made by the chairman of Sindh’s ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, during the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s anti-government rally in Karachi on Sunday.
“You cannot succeed in encroaching upon our province’s islands through ordinances issued in the dead of night. A storm is brewing in Sindh. The islands legally belong to the provinces and fishermen of Sindh and Balochistan,” he told the rally while also naming the other southern province.
He warned the PTI administration to withdraw the ordinance by Wednesday, adding that the PPP would otherwise repeal it by using legislative tools in the Senate, National Assembly and the provincial legislature.
On August 31, President Arif Alvi promulgated the ordinance to establish the Pakistan Islands Development Authority that was going to operate in the “internal and territorial waters of Pakistan.”
The government of the southwestern province of Balochistan, which has a vast coastline, welcomed the ordinance, but the provincial administration of Sindh demanded its immediate retraction by pointing out that the federal government could not control islands within 12 nautical miles since they fell into the provincial domain.
On October 15, the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, a representative organization of some three million fishermen, took out a boat rally as part of its “save the islands movement” to record their protest.
Speaking to Arab News on the occasion, the forum’s chairman, Muhammad Ali Shah, had said that the federal government’s decision to develop the Islands was going to disturb marine life and render millions of fishermen jobless.
Talking to the media before tabling the resolution on Wednesday, the spokesperson of Sindh government, Murtaza Wahab, said the presidential ordinance was against Articles 1 and 172 of Pakistan’s constitution.
The resolution, he said, urged the federal government to advise the president to cancel the ordinance.
Pakistan has been thinking of developing its islands since 2008 when its former military ruler, General (r) Pervez Musharraf, struck a deal with a Dubai-based construction company to build a model city over 12,000 acres along with a 1.5-kilometer bridge at the cost of $50 million.