PPP urges PM to address concerns on corridor

Khursheed Shah criticises government for its ‘governance failures’

ISLAMABAD:

A day after the treasury benches defeated its move to make it mandatory for the prime minister to attend the parliamentary session once a week, the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) on Wednesday once again pressed for the presence of the PM to address opposition’s concerns on various national and international issues.

PPP’s Khursheed Shah, who is also the opposition leader in the National Assembly, demanded that the prime minister must take the smaller provinces into confidence on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).



The CPEC is a multi-billion dollar network of roads and rails links that is planned to connect China’s semi-autonomous Xinjiang region to Arabian Sea via Gwadar port in Balochistan.

Smaller provinces – Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan – have reservations over the CPEC plan as they allege that the federal government is reneging on its commitments made in an All Parties Conference (APC) last year and are building the eastern route of the project first.



He said his party, which governs Sindh province, has no issue with the route controversy and no objection on the eastern route. “But still the party is backing smaller provinces’ stance as it wants to see a way out of the prevailing controversy,” he said.

The opposition leader also criticised the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for, what he called, ‘its governance failures’. He said during the last two and a half years, the government had further burdened the country by taking Rs4,000 billion additional debt from international monetary institutions.



Shah claimed that during his party’s previous government the prices of petroleum products were brought down, while the present government was not letting the benefit of lower petroleum prices to reach public.

Meanwhile, the opposition parties criticised the government for the continued absence of a number of lawmakers from the treasury benches. Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) MNA Abdul Rashid Godil refused to deliver his speech in protest, saying that he could not address to the walls.

MNA Jamshed Dasti pointed out the lack of quorum and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) lawmaker, Chaudhry Mehmood Bashir Virk, who was chairing the session in the absence of the speaker and deputy speaker, adjourned the session till Thursday (today).

In the question hour, the minister for water and power informed the house that the federal government owes Rs56.36 billion to the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda); provincial governments have to pay Wapda Rs33.15 billion, while the authority has recovered Rs24.93 billion from consumers.



During a debate, the PML-N lawmaker Asia Naaz made an oblique reference to the Inter-Services Public Relations’ (ISPR) song issued at the first anniversary of December 16, 2014 Peshawar tragedy and said it would be much better that instead of ‘teaching enemy’s children’, “we strengthened the hands of well elected prime minister so that he could enforce education emergency in the country.”

Naaz also indirectly hit out at the PPP led Sindh government and said, “If [the rulers] can manage to ensure treatment of a cat then why they cannot ensure treatment of children who are dying due to lack of health facility in Sindh’s Thar district,” Naaz said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th, 2016.