KARACHI: Amid hullaballoo by the opposition parties in the Sindh Assembly against ‘bulldozing’ their business by the treasury benches, the house on Thursday passed four bills pertaining to educational institutions and introduced another four to be discussed on Friday (today).

It began with the rejection of an adjournment motion moved by Pakistan Muslim League-Functional’s Nusrat Abbasi which claimed 25 doctors deputed in Thar had been transferred to Karachi and Hyderabad.

Senior Minister Nisar Khuhro said no such transfers had been made. However, a few of the doctors had been allowed to leave the area for some time to complete their higher studies.

The mover did not buy the minister’s explanation and asked Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza to allow her to speak on the matter.

‘Why should we join you for a sit-in in Islamabad?’

The chair, however, cited Rule 90 of the Rules of Procedure requiring one-fifth of the total strength of the house to rise to allow the admissibility of an adjournment motion.

Opposition leader Khwaja Izharul Hasan said the government was bent on “bulldozing” everything that came from the opposition benches. Ms Raza said she went by the book.

Amid this conversation, most of the opposition parties’ lawmakers left their seats and gathered in front of the speaker’s chair.

They began chanting “give justice to Sindh” and “show record of past 10 years’ rule” when the chair allowed Law Minister Zia Lanjar to table bills for introduction and consideration in the house.

The protesting members kept chanting slogans for around 20 minutes during which time many of them tore up documents of the day’s business and tossed the pieces into the air in front of the speaker’s chair.

During all this, on a suggestion by Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s parliamentary leader Syed Sardar Ahmed, the law minister agreed to introduce four of the bills –– all pertaining to workers –– and deferred their consideration to the next session.

Those bills were: The Sindh Employees Social Security (Amendment) Bill, 2018; The Sindh Employees Old-Age Benefits (Amendment) Bill, 2018; The Sindh Minimum Wages (Amendment) Bill, 2018, and The Sindh Workers Welfare Fund (Amendment) Bill, 2018.

However, Mr Lanjar did not agree to postpone consideration on the remaining four bills, which annoyed the opposition who walked out of the house.

As the opposition left, Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani returned to replace his deputy.

The house passed the four bills into law in the absence of the opposition, allowed construction of a women university in Sukkur (The Begum Nusrat Bhutto Women University Sukkur Bill, 2018), turning Shah Latif University’s campus in Shikarpur as a fully-fledged university named after poet Shaikh Ayaz (The Shaikh Ayaz University Shikarpur Bill, 2018), The Sindh (Regularisation of Contract Employees of Khairpur Medical College, Khairpur) Bill, 2018, and The Ziauddin University (Amendment) Bill, 2018.

The last bill was returned by the governor for reconsideration, which was presented by Dr Sohrab Sarki with some amendments and was passed into law again.

Sindh University

Earlier, Khwaja Izharul Hasan on a point of order expressed his concern that the University of Sindh had notified that signboards and building titles in the university and on all its campuses should be in Sindhi and English. He demanded suspension of the vice chancellor of the university for ignoring the same for Urdu.

Education Minister Jam Mehtab Dahar said the matter was not in his notice, seeking some time to verify it from the relevant quarters.

City zoo

Responding to a calling-attention notice of Ghazala Sial asking the Sindh government for the renovation of the Karachi Zoo at par with global standards, Local Government Minister Jam Khan Shoro said a scheme for the uplift of the city’s zoological gardens had already begun.

Nadeem Razi of the MQM, who has defected to the PSP, asked the finance minister (chief minister) what amount of funds were released by the Sindh government to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation for arrangements of the Pakistan Super League final in Karachi.

He said the government had given Rs135 million to the KMC of which some Rs35m was spent on illuminating the city. He called for an audit of the funds.

Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said the government had given responsibility in various sectors to the KMC and funds were also given to the Karachi East district administration. He said an audit of the funds would be carried out. However, he said the funds for the event were allocated in parity with what the Punjab government had kept for similar events in Lahore.

Answering another calling-attention notice of Nusrat Abbasi, Minister Shoro said the completion time for the Submarine Chowk underpass was extended because of a host of hurdles, including administrative and technical issues.

Adviser to the CM on social welfare Shamim Mumtaz, responding to a notice by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Seema Zia, said three shelter homes for street children –– two for boys and one for girls –– would be completed by June next year.

Suicide threat over water issue

MQM’s Kamran Akhtar warned that he would commit suicide inside the assembly premises if water was not supplied to his constituency in Baldia.

Minister Shoro, among others, requested him not to go to that extreme, adding that water supply from the Hub Dam had decreased to 35mgd from 100mgd, thus the government was laying a pipeline reliant on the Indus source.

Opposition warns of protest

Later, opposition leader Izharul Hasan told reporters after the session that all the opposition parties had joined hands to protest against the government on the premises of the Sindh Assembly Building on Friday.

He criticised the chief minister for seeking other political parties’ help to stage a sit-in in Islamabad.

“Why should we join you for a sit-in in Islamabad? The CM has miserably failed [to perform] in Sindh. His government ignores our constituencies in development schemes, which forced one of our colleagues to warn of committing suicide,” he said.

However, he said he had persuaded the MQM lawmaker not to go to that extreme and “he has accepted our request”.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2018