KARACHI – The People’s Amn Committee (PAC) is not being disbanded, nor has there been any official or unofficial discussion in this regard, PAC second-in-command Shakeeb Baloch told Pakistan Today on Thursday.
After a meeting on Sunday with the PAC in Lyari, Sindh Home Minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza had said that as per the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) long-standing demand, the PAC would be ‘disbanded’ and merged with the Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP) ‘youth groups’.
PAC office-bearers have refuted this, however, and have said that Dr Mirza actually acknowledged their contributions by saying that the Committee has been working for amn (peace), and would continue to do so. “We haven’t heard about it, but he might have made a purely political statement about ‘disbanding’ the PAC. We would obviously have known if anything of this sort were discussed with us. It wasn’t; nor is disbanding the PAC on the cards,” Baloch clarified.
While MQM Rabita Committee member Waseem Aftab, felicitated the ‘decision’, another Muttahida leader, Raza Haroon, said that while the party has said on several occasions that criminals are using the PAC’s name to cover their own activities, no explicit demands have been made to disband the Committee.
