Sindh Assembly continues lacklustre pre-budget debate

KARACHI: Majority of the lawmakers from the two sides of the aisle in the Sindh Assembly on Thursday continued to condemn each others’ leaderships instead of forwarding their respective proposals and suggestions for the next provincial budget on the fifth day of the ongoing pre-budget discussion.

Lethargic attitude and apathy towards the proceedings by most of the treasury and opposition members haunted the deserted house of 168 lawmakers as hardly 21 of them were present when Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani began the session with a delay of one hour, a practice that has become a routine.

Those who participated in the pre-budget discussion also left the house immediately after delivering their respective speeches most of which mainly contained harsh criticism, jibes and allegations instead of budget proposals.

The thin attendance of the members also marred Question Hour as only one out of seven questions could come up due to the absence of the members who had submitted the queries.

13 more lawmakers take part in fifth day of discussion; chief minister to wind up debate today

The speaker, who was visibly irked over the absence of majority of the MPAs in the house, said that he had been noticing the absence of members and ordered to compile a list of habitual absentees.

Adeel Shahzad of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan was one of the few members who spoke of issues in their respective constituencies. The speaker also appreciated him and reminded the members from the two sides of the aisle that the pre-budget discussion was meant only for giving proposals and suggestions and not for delivering political speeches.

The young MQM-P MPA said that the water shortage was the biggest issue his constituents and the people of district West were facing.

He said that even during the winters the people of Orangi Town, which he said that the largest slum area of Asia, were deprived of water.

“I personally submitted many proposals for uplift works in my constituency but none of them was incorporated in the budget. It seems we are not members of this house,” he deplored.

He asked the local government department to establish a pumping station at Orangi No.10. He also demanded that a 48-inch line be replaced from Banaras to Urdu Chowk so that the people of district West could get water.

Girls’ university in Orangi demanded

Mr Shahzad said that Orangi Town was situated in the outlands of the city and the area girls had to go far away to Karachi University for their studies as there was no public sector university in the locality.

He suggested that the women college in Orangi be upgraded to a university for female students.

The MQM-P lawmaker said that there were no traffic signals in the entire district West due to which accidents were occurring on a daily basis.

He said that entire roads in his constituency were in deplorable condition and asked the government to allocate sufficient funds for the repair and construction of roads.

Labour Minister Saeed Ghani said so far, out of around 600,000 registered labourers more than 100,000 had been issued Benazir Mazdoor cards and for the rest the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) had been given the task to complete the procedure by May 1.

He said that the current fiscal year had been particularly tough on the people of Sindh as the province experienced floods and millions of people were displaced.

He said that on behalf of the labour department, medical teams not only treated more than 27,000 patients free of charge, but also provided free medicines to the flood victims.

The minister also took a jibe at former prime minister Imran Khan for avoiding arrest. “If this sort of resistance was shown by the PPP, MQM or any nationalist party of Balochistan, then everyone knows what would have happened to them,” he said, while referring to the PTI’s resistance to Punjab police.

‘Bilawal spent Rs1.75bn on 47 foreign visits’

Leader of the Opposition Haleem Adil Shaikh gave a fiery rejoinder to Minister Ghani and said that the PTI workers wanted to save their chairman’s life which, he said, was in danger. “We are not like the PPP as the one who celebrated Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death penalty is now their Sindh president,” he said.

He said that PPP chairman Bilwal Bhutto-Zardari being the foreign minister had spent Rs1.75 billion on his 47 foreign visits but he hardly visited flood-hit people. “He did go to some districts of Sindh but for a photo session,” he said.

He said that Rs1.7 trillion was spent in the education sector during the PPP rule in Sindh during the past 14 years but the state of education in the province was in front of everyone. He said that six million children were still out of school in Sindh.

The opposition leader said that Rs1.4 trillion spent by the health department but the people were asked to buy even syringes by the public sector hospitals.

He said that the provincial government spent Rs1.1 trillion on law and order yet it required another Rs2.5bn for operation against dacoits in riverine area.

PTI’s Rabia Azfar Nizami, Jamal-ud-din Siddiqui and Shahzad Qureshi; MQM-P’s Shahana Ashar and Muhammad Hussain Khan; PPP’s Ghazala Sial, Zulfiqar Shah and Jam Khan Shoro; and Grand Democratic Alliance’s Dr Rafiq Bhanban and Arif Mustafa Jatoi also spoke on the occasion.

Later, the house was adjourned to Friday (today) when the chief minister would deliver his pre-budget speech.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2023