KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly on Thursday passed a bill enhancing privileges and allowances of the provincial parliamentary secretaries, including ‘special allowance’ of Rs 50,000, use of a car, house rent and sumptuary allowance.

Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Mukesh Kumar Chawla, who presented The Sindh Parliamentary Secretaries (Salaries, Allowances and Privileges) (Amendment) Bill, 2021, said that the privileges and perks of the parliamentary secretaries were increased as their remuneration were nominal as compared to their counterparts of other provinces.

He informed the house that a common lawmaker of Sindh Assembly got a sum of around Rs155,000 monthly but a parliamentary secretary receives an additional ‘nominal’ amount of approximately Rs25,000.

In reply to a query of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s Moham­mad Hussain Khan, the parliamentary affairs minister said that the increase would not be a burden on the provincial exchequer.

MQM lawmaker says Sindh cannot afford such moves

He said that there were five parliamentary secretaries serving in the province. “There would not be an increase and burden of millions of rupees as expressed by Hussain Khan,” he added.

The MQM-P lawmaker while opposing the bill had said that Sindh was already short of resources and now the ruling party wanted to increase the pay of parliamentary secretaries. “We [Sindh province] don’t have enough resources to uplift our infrastructure, resolve issues pertaining to education department,” he said.

Mr Hussain went on to say that even during the Covid-19 pandemic, the provincial government formed a fund to cope with the deadly virus, which showed that the province was short of resources.

According to clause 3 of the bill, a parliamentary secretary could draw his salary, allowances, perks and privileges in capacity of an MPA. Besides, he or she would also be entitled to a special allowance of Rs50,000 to be paid by law department and an official car along with a driver by the department he or she belonged to.

The parliamentary secretaries would also get Rs45,000 per month in the head of house rent along with sumptuary allowance at the rate of Rs10,000 per month.

Mr Chawla also introduced three bills — The Control of Narcotic Substance (Sindh Amendment) Bill, 2021; The Sindh Child Protection Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2021; and The Letters of Administration and Succession Certificates Bill, 2021 — which were sent to standing committee for further deliberations.

Meanwhile, Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani ruled out of order an adjournment motion tabled by Syed Abdul Rasheed of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, regarding “lack of basic facilities”. The speaker maintained that the motion was not according to rules and procedures of the assembly.

Criticising the provincial government, Mr Rasheed said that it had turned entire Karachi into ruins. “Karachi is economic hub of Pakistan and generates maximum revenue but the city doesn’t have proper cleanliness system,” the MMA lawmaker said.

Separately, Energy Minister Imtiaz Ahmed Sheikh said that absence of district municipal corporations and lack of nomination of names by the high court had halted the meetings of district public safety commissions.

Responding to a calling-attention notice on behalf of Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, who also holds home department portfolio, Mr Sheikh criticized PTI MPA Arsalan Taj Ghumman for moving the notices while there were no district municipal corporations.

“Why district Public Safety and Police Complaints Commission have not been formed yet as required under Chapter-V of the Sindh (Repeal of the Police Act, 1861 and Revival of Police Order, 2002) (Amendment) Act, 2019,” Ghumman had asked.

He said that the commission had to monitor the police conduct and behaviour with citizens but it didn’t hold its meeting for last six months.

Meanwhile, the parliamentary affairs minister assured Shahnawaz Jadoon of PTI that action would be taken against open sale of narcotics in his constituency.

He said that strict action was taken with assistance of police and Rangers in the past too.

The minister also asked the governments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan to stop drug smuggling to Sindh from their respective provinces.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2021