‘Unprepared’ interior ministry disappoints Senate committee

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Interior, on Monday, expressed its displeasure over the delayed provision of working papers and the lack of preparation related to the agenda items. This lack of preparedness led the committee, which met here with Senator Mohsin Aziz in the chair, to defer several agenda items for future consideration.

The deferred items included important legislative and non-legislative business including the briefing by the secretary interior and DG FIA (Director General of Federal Investigation Agency) on the recent incident of capsizing of a boat in Greece which resulted in the loss of many young Pakistanis who were trying to settle abroad for better sources of livelihood.

The committee expressed serious reservations on the fact that the Ministry sought deferments on all the bills and that too just 30 minutes before the commencement of the meeting.

The committee observed that the ministry’s response has always been negligent, however, it was observed to be getting persistently more non-professional.

The chairman committee said that he tried every possible way to redress this issue but to no avail and that the last option left was to move a privilege motion against the ministry. The committee regretfully deferred the meeting up till next week.

The meeting was attended by Senator Samina Mumtaz Gilani, Rana Maqbool Ahmed, Shahadat Awan, Fauzia Arshad, Kamil Ali Agha, Denesh Kumar, Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti and Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan. Officials of some relevant departments were also in attendance.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2023