Women MPAs in K-P are more punctual

Female lawmakers in the provincial assembly have the highest attendance ratio than their male counterparts.

According to the attendance log issued by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly Secretariat for the past two parliamentary years, prominent lawmakers of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), including Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, MPA Atif Khan, Education Minister Shahram Khan and Amjid Afridi remained absent from most of the sessions of the house.

In the first two sessions of the assembly, the attendance of the parliamentarians was normal. However, during the third session, Idrees Khan and Fahim Khan remained absent for eight days while Ahmed Kundi did not attend the fourth sitting of the assembly at all.

CM Mahmood Khan and other lawmakers, including Muhammad Naeem, Muhammad Arif and Muhammad Afridi did not attend the fourth session of the assembly for five days while Agha Gandapur and Aisha remained absent for six days.

The provincial chief executive and lawmaker Ali Tarkai did not attend the fifth session of the house at all while Tufail Anjum, Taimur Jhagra, Amjid Afridi, Sitra Afrin remained absent for six days.

Similarly, lawmakers including Malik Badshah Saleh, Faisal Zaman, Muhammad Idrees, Jhagra, Maleha Asghar and Tarkai did not attend the seventh session for seven days.

The chief minister did not attend the eighth session of the provincial assembly at all while lawmakers including Faisal Zaman, Tarkai, Jhagra remained absent for nine days during the session.

Lawmaker Aqibullah was not present during eight sittings of the eighth session.

As many as 34 lawmakers remained absent during one session of the ninth session of the house. The chief minister remained absent during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth sessions of the house.

Lawmakers including Shakeel Ahmad, Ali Tarkai, Shahram Tarkai, Muhammad Atif, Zahir Shah, Ghazan Jamal, Muhammad Iqbal, Nasirullah did not attend the eleventh session at all.

Lawmakers of the ruling PTI including Malik Shaukat, Liaquat Khan, Shah Faisal, Zafar Azam, Agha Ikram, Amjid Khan, Muhammad Arif, Shahram and Ali Tarkai remained absent during the twelfth session of the house.

During the thirteenth session of the provincial assembly. Ali Tarkai, Shahram Tarkai, Pir Fida remained absent while Ziaullah Khan, Shah Azam Khan did not attend it for four days. Legislator Shah Muhammad Khan, Ziaullah and Amjid did not attend the thirteenth session for three days.

Meanwhile, it has been observed that despite the installation of a biometric attendance system at the K-P Assembly - making it the first assembly in the country to adopt digital technology for attendance, most members still mark their attendance manually in the register.

Only the staff of the provincial assembly use the biometric attendance system.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2020.