Punjab Assembly amends local govt law

All five resolutions proposed by opposition rejected by majority votes.

LAHORE: The Punjab Assembly passed Punjab Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2010 on Thursday. Five resolutions proposed by the opposition were, however, rejected by majority votes.

Law Minister Rana Sanaullah presented the draft of the Punjab Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2010, based on the recommendations of the Standing Committee for Local Government and Rural Development.

The amendment was carried by majority vote.

The Bill was opposed by Dr Samia Amjad and Samuel Kamran from the opposition. Dr Samia Amjad said that the Bill should be circulated to determine its popular acceptability. Samuel Kamran said that the Bill should be sent given to the Select Committee before being put to vote.

Sanaullah opposed the proposals and said that the house represented the 90 million people of the Punjab. He said that there was no need to circulate the Bill or to send it to a Select Committee.

Questions:

There was a shortage of 4,500 lecturers across the province, Education Minister Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman informed the house. He said over the next six months 2,000 lecturers will be appointed through the Public Service Commission.

To meet the requirements meanwhile, he said, contract-based appointments were being made.

He was responding to a question from Bushra Nawaz regarding the status of faculty in public colleges and universities of the province.

The audit compliance reviews of the teachers who had completed five years of service were being regularised by the goverment, he said.

To a question asked by Amir Sahotra, a minority MPA, about the denationalisation of the missionary institutions, the education minister said that the Forman Christian College University and the Kinnaird College University have been denationalised. The policy on denationalisation of the Murray College in Sialkot and the Gordon College in Rawalpindi has not been finalised, he added.

Sahotra then reminded Rehman of the pending denationalisation of the Rang Mahal College, despite orders from the chief minister. The minister assured him that the matter would be taken up by the education committee.

To a question by Imran Nazir, the education minister said that Sunday classes at the Lahore College for Women University had been cancelled due to loadshedding.

Motions:

Through an adjournment motion, Shaukat Basra of the PPP said that some people and media groups were conspiring against democracy and wanted to derail it. He counted Rana Sanaullah among them.

Rana Sanaullah, on a point of personal explanation, said that democracy was not surviving in the country due to a single party. He said that supporters of all the political parties had made sacrifices for it. The media personnel too, he said, had been beaten up, and jailed in the pursuit of democracy.

“No single party should try to boast to be champions of democracy.

The house should not be used for setting personal accounts,” he said.

To this, Shaukat Basra said that if the law minster believed so, he should refuse to a media group that was targeting the government and the democracy.

When Shaukat Basra again used the phrase ‘derailing the democracy’, Sanaullah asked the speaker to direct Basra not to use such words.

The session was adjourned until 10 am on Friday (today).

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd, 2010.