MULTAN, Oct 3: The district council, Multan, has approved an increase of 450 per cent in the discretionary fund of the Zila Nazim, raising the allocation from Rs10m to Rs55m.

Immediate casualties of this decision are health and education sectors as Rs10m have been slashed from the funds allocated for the college of home economics, Rs10m from the education and Rs5m from the health allocations.

None of the council members objected to the unprecedented raise in the nazim’s discretionary funds, that too, at the cost of two vital sectors. The house approved the raise unanimously.

Several members of the council complained that the cotton crop had been badly hit by pest attack, especially American and army bollworms, but the appropriate pesticides were missing from the market.

Zila Nazim Riaz Qureshi observed that the pesticides were imported keeping in view the demand of previous years and the shortage was owing to unusual pest attack.

However, the council members differed with the Nazim and pointed out that the required pesticides were available in blackmarket. They urged the nazim to organize raids on the ware houses of pesticides firms.

The house expressed grief over the sad demise of veteran leader Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan and offered fateha for the departed soul.

PPP MEETING: PPP’s Multan division council has praised the political courage of Asif Ali Zardari for not succumbing to the official pressure despite being in jail for the last seven years.

A meeting of the council, constituted recently by PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, was held here on Friday with its coordinator Ahmed Hasan Deharr in the chair.

Prominent among the council members present in the meeting were Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani, Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Begum Shahnaz Javed, Khwaja Rizwan Alam, Javed Hashmi, Khursheed Khan, Mukhtar Awan and Habibullah. The council has representation from all the six districts of former Multan civil division.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Deharr said that the party was being reorganized at the grassroot level and the divisional councils would help bridge the gap between party cadre and its electoral candidates.

In their speeches, Yousaf Raza Gillani and Shah Mehmood Qureshi accused PPP defectors who later on formed the Patriot group of the party for helping to cobble a ‘government of oppression’.