PPP continues to stage walkout from NA

Government fails to meet NA quorum again; 77 locomotives inducted into PR fleet in five years, house informed

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawmakers on Friday continued to stage a walkout from the National Assembly (NA) session over government’s failure to disclose the whereabouts of their missing party members.

It was the second consecutive day of embarrassment for the government as it failed to meet quorum in the NA with the sitting being adjourned without conducting regular business other than the question hour.

After the question hour, deputy speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi, while chairing the sitting, had wanted to give the floor of the house to Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz to give policy statement on the ongoing international issues.

As the house was not in order, the sitting was adjourned till Monday.

Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq presided over the sitting for around half-an-hour while the deputy speaker chaired the rest of the proceedings.



Prior to adjournment of the sitting, PPPP’s Syed Naveed Qamar on a point of order said that what sort of law was in practice in the country that people were being picked up without a trace.

He said three loyalists of PPP whose whereabouts are yet to be known had connection with a single person PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari.

According to some media reports, three close aides of Zardari recently went missing from different parts of the country, sending the party into panic mode and triggering fears Zardari may be the actual target. Ghulam Qadir Marri, Ashfaque Leghari and Nawab Leghari have been whisked away mysteriously.

Qamar said as there is no clarity regarding their disappearance they (PPPP) would assume that they have been picked up by the government.



“We have been requesting the government for the past five days to satisfy the queries of the PPPP regarding disappearance of these persons,” he said. “This is a federal issue; however, the government has turned a blind eye to it.”

Today our people are disappearing, while in the past it was the issue of Muttahida Qaumi Movement and in the coming days it might also be the issue for the ruling party, Qamar stated.

He said by ignoring the issue this matter would worsen. Qamar was of the view that if the government has no response on the issue then it must tell that it is helpless.

“The government and the parliament can’t be run in this manner,” he said. “We are not getting any satisfactory response from the government.”



We cannot become part of business of the house and are staging walkout from the house to mark our protest, he said.

The entire proceedings of the sitting on Friday continued for around one hour and 20 minutes. The parliamentary leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, All Pakistan Muslim League and Pakistan Muslim League (Zia-ul-Haq Shaheed) attended the sitting.

At the outset, the house offered Fateha for the departed soul of a student Mashal Khan, who was shot dead at Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan.



Replying to another question, Parliamentary Secretary for Information and Broadcasting Mohsin Shahnawaz Ranjha told the house that the government is making strenuous efforts to make Pakistan Railways (PR) a profitable organisation. He said that 77 locomotives have been inducted into PR fleet during the last five years. He said over Rs10 billion revenue was earned from freight sector in the last fiscal year, which is an increase of 81 per cent.

He said punctuality of mail express trains has improved tremendously. He said that there were 90 passenger trains operational in 2013, which increased to 106 last year. He said PR will start new passenger trains very soon between Rawalpindi and Kohat, Sibi and Harnai and Karachi to Mirpurkhas.