The panel failed to clear this ‘crucial’ legislation for the third time due to a lack of quorum; the minimum number of members required for a committee to conduct the business. The bill titled the General Statistics Reorganisation Act of 2010 has been pending with the standing committee for the last seven months.
The legal requirement of a minimum of four members out of 19 could not be met for over 50 minutes. This meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Economic Affairs and Statistics was chaired by Malik Azmat Khan of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
A member of the panel, Liaquat Bhatti, left the room within 30 minutes of the beginning of the meeting, resulting in a lack of quorum and the chairman had to adjourn the meeting, leaving the Statistics Division officials in a lurch. Before Bhatti left, he signed the attendance sheet which made him eligible for seven days of travel and daily allowances which amounts to several tens of thousands of rupees.
The standing committee’s inability to clear the bill despite three meetings shows how serious parliamentarians are with their legislative business, said an official after the meeting.
“The committee has taken a long to clear this important bill. We have to formulate rules and regulations after the approval of the bill,” said acting Secretary Statistics Division, Abid Ali, who was worried about the pressure from international donors.
This bill was a result of international donor agencies’ demand that Pakistan’s overall statistical system be overhauled because it lost credibility in the eyes of the people because of alleged manipulation of inflation and national growth figures.
The stated objective of the bill is to provide credible data by giving autonomy to the Statistics Division, which after the approval of the bill would be turned into an autonomous body, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
The draft bill proposes that a seven-member governing council be constituted to take policy decisions of the bureau. It further proposes that the federal minister for finance should be the head of the council. However, the Senate Standing Committee on Finance has already objected to a sitting minister being appointed as its head.
The Deputy Director General Statistics, Urs Jamani, said that the finance ministry did not easily provide funds that led the donors to propose an independent bureau, having complete financial and administrative autonomy.
During an hour-long meeting, the members consumed most of the time by asking questions which were not pertinent to the draft bill, which shows that the members had not gone through the documents.
Only one member, Sufyan Yusuf, recommended that the venue of the proposed governing council meetings be fixed. He was pushing to give the committee members’ representation on the council.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 16th, 2010.
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