Punjab Assembly: Opposition resists bill ‘depriving entitled retirees of houses’

Six new members take oath of office.

LAHORE:

The treasury benches in the Punjab Assembly failed on Monday for a third consecutive day to pass a bill on the Punjab Government Servants Housing Foundation (PGSHF) in the face of fierce resistance from the opposition.

The PGSHF Second Amendment Bill 2012 has been on the assembly agenda on each of the first three days of the ongoing session, but is yet to be presented. The government had passed the bill in an earlier session, but Governor Sardar Latif Khosa refused to sign it into law, raising nine objections that, he said, constituted a violation of the fundamental of government servants.

A leading opposition legislator said that the amendment bill would deprive hundreds of retired government servants of houses that they were promised under the law. He said that the opposition would “force” the government to pass the bill with prospective, rather than retrospective effect.

Ehsanul Haq Naulatia of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) said that in its un-amended form, the PGSHF law, introduced in 2000, stated that the government would provide a constructed house to its employees when they retire, provided the employees agree to certain deductions from their monthly salaries.

But since 2004, retiring government employees who had made the payments and were entitled to houses had not been able to get them. He said that dozens of the retired government servants had died, and hundreds were awaiting houses, but neither the previous government nor the current government had addressed the problem.

Now, Naulatia said, the Punjab government was aiming to pass an amendment bill which would grant the retired employees empty plots rather than constructed houses. He said that the bill would be applied with retrospective effect, which was unfair. “The bill should apply with prospective effect, not retrospective effect. It is not fair to the employees,” he said.

New MPAs

Also on Monday, six new legislators were sworn in as assembly members: Mohsin Ashraf (PP-129), Muhammad Ikram (PP-122), Chaudhry Khadim Hussain (PP-26), Chaudhry Hanif Jutt (PP-226) and Nawaz Chohan (PP-92), all of whom are with the PML-Nawaz; and Umer Sharif (PP-133) of the PML-Quaid.

Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal administered the oath of office to the new MPAs at the start of the day’s proceedings, which began at around 5pm, two hours later than scheduled.

Hussain, who won the election as an independent candidate but later joined the PML-N, lashed out at his opponent in the by-election, Raja Muhammad Afzal from Jehlum. “Raja boasted that his two sons were sitting MNAs from Jhelum and other relatives were senators, so he would easily defeat me, but the voters confounded his expectations,” he said. His criticism of Raja and his sons, who are also with the PML-N, drew a round of appreciative desk-thumping from the opposition.

Major (r) Zulfiqar Gondal of the PPP congratulated the new members, particularly Shareef of the PML-Q, as he had defeated “chief turncoat” Dr Tahir Ali Javed’s father Dr Naimat Ali. Dr Tahir, a member of the PML-Q forward bloc in the Punjab Assembly, had vacated his seat as he was a dual national.

During question hour, Parliamentary Finance Secretary Abdul Waheed fielded questions concerning the Finance Department, while Agriculture Minister Ahmad Ali Aulakh answered queries about the Wildlife and Fisheries Department.

The session was adjourned till 10 am on Tuesday.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2012.