KARACHI-Karachi Mayor Barrister Murtaza Wahab on Wednesday said that an endowment fund has been established for the rehabilitation and support of individuals so that they can be saved from social injustice and given opportunities to lead a dignified life.
He said this while addressing the Fast Track Cities Conference organised by the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care and the United Nations AIDS Programme in Amsterdam and the Netherlands.
The Mayor of Amsterdam Famke Helsingna and mayors and representatives of other cities were also present on this occasion. Barrister Murtaza Wahab has said that appropriate legislation with a legal background is necessary to make any big decision or concept sustainable. There has been considerable progress in Pakistan regarding the rights of citizens, Sindh province has taken the initiative to protect HIV-AIDS-affected people, he said.
The mayor said Karachi is the sixth largest city in the world with a population of 20 million. Like other cities in the world, Karachi is also facing many challenges, including the challenge of immigrants, for which many measures are being taken to deal with. Barrister Murtaza Wahab said that for the first time in Pakistan, transgenders have been given a 0.5 percent quota in jobs with the facility of ID cards and passports, and for the first time in history, seats have been allocated for transgenders in the city council of Karachi. “Every possible effort is being made so these people should be protected from biased behaviour by other members of the society,” he maintained. He said that we are playing our role in the development of Karachi and we are trying hard to solve the basic problems of the citizens on a priority basis. The participants appreciated the speech of Mayor Karachi Barrister Murtaza Wahab, while the mayors and local government representatives of other cities of the world also expressed their views.