Sindh Assembly session lasts for a whole minute

Opposition questions logic of continuing session after budget has been passed

KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly session on Friday adjourned till Monday hardly a minute after it began. Though scheduled for 10am, the session began at 10:49am and adjourned at 10.50am due to low attendance of MPAs. Only one lawmaker was present when the Speaker arrived, and as many as six MPAs - 4% of the total members - were present at the outset and the adjournment of the sitting.

No parliamentary leader of any of the political parties in the House attended the proceedings.

Sindh Assembly passes Rs1.21 trillion budget

Earlier, on Wednesday, the assembly had passed the budget for the fiscal year 2019-2020. Opposition members, Nusrat Sehar Abbasi, Khurram Sher Zaman, Naseem Rajpar and Firdous Shamim Naqvi have criticised the continuation of the session despite approval of budget, claiming it is illogical. They opine that the Sindh government spends Rs5 million on assembly sessions on a daily basis only to benefit its members. This expenditure is only an injustice towards the citizens.

Speaking to the media, Naqvi, Abbasi and Rajpar, said that a new vaccine was being administered to the people of Sindh.

Taking a jibe at the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led Sindh government, they dubbed the session as an 'aunty-corruption session' which according to them, was being continued just to keep 'aunty-corruption' away from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Islamabad.

Supplementary budget: Sindh approves additional funds for CM House, other departments

The Sindh Assembly speaker would typically begin the session with a delay of at least two hours but the session on private members day was adjourned immediately, they remarked. This was pure injustice, they declared.

The opposition members insisted they were raising their voice on every issue of Sindh. The federal government should be informed in writing of the spread of locusts in Sindh, they said, while maintaining that the Centre was ready to cooperate with the provincial government. According to them, the federal government has spent Rs500 million in efforts to control the locust spread.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2019.