JAMSHORO: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah said on Tuesday that he did not know about the sudden flight of a team of the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) from Tharparkar on Dec 11 in the wake of threats and harassment by police and local administration.

The team was not intercepted or stopped from work in Thar. The administration might have refused to look after them because ofunsatisfactory law and order situation in the desert region, he conjectured.

`If 200 to 300 people land in Thar, the district administration cannot look after them. It would, however, have been better if consultants and specialists rather than LUMHS students had gone there to treat patients,` he said.

The chief minister was speaking to journalists after attending the 17th convocation of the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET) held at the university campus inJamshoro on Tuesday.

Answering a question about the tragic incident in Peshawar and ongoing sit-ins by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, he said the PTI chief should think of the precarious situation the country was facing nowadays and urged all parties to play their role in eliminating terrorism, promoting harmony and strengthening the country.

He rejected reports of existence of Daish in the country and attempts by MPA Nadir Magsi to form a forward bloc in the Pakistan Peoples Party along with 26 MPAs.Earlier, the chief minister said in his address to the convocation that after the 18th amendment, all the departments had been handed over to provinces. The Sindh government had formed its own higher education commission and allocated Rs5 billion for the universities in current year`s budget, he said.

He said that Rs300 million had been allocated for MUET and announced Rs20 million for setting up a chair of the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto in the university.

He assured the Sindh govern-ment would cooperate with the MUET to establish the Thatta engineering college and an extension of the Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto engineering college in Khairpur.

The chief minister said that Sindh government was getting taxes on services because of the 18th amendment and it was trying hardtogetitsshareandduesofthe last NFC award. The Sindh government secured Rs25 billion last year while target for the upcoming year was set at Rs49 billion, he said.