LAHORE: The treasury must have been feeling embarrassed on Monday as it failed to take up its business due to lack of quorum for the sixth time out of seven sittings of the 21st session and the proceedings had to be adjourned for Tuesday (today) morning.

Following the question hour and taking up of adjournment motions, Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal began the government business by asking finance department parliamentary secretary Rana Babar to present the annual report of the Punjab Pension Fund for the years 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 for discussion.

When Mr Babar started reading the report, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Saadia Suhail Rana pointed out quorum. Though her move seemingly did not come as a surprise both for the treasury and opposition, PTI’s Mian Aslam Iqbal was awestruck and asked her why she had done so.

Leaving the floor of the House, the PML-N’s Malik Ahmad Khan also admonished the opposition, terming it “such an incompetent opposition”. Mian Aslam Iqbal told him that the move was surprise for him as well because he had submitted his name to participate in the debate.

Session adjourned for sixth time

The PTI’s Aslam Iqbal and Shoaib Siddiqui kept sitting in the house till the speaker asked for counting and adjourned the session till Tuesday (today) morning.

When contacted in the lobby , Shoaib Siddiqui said the quorum was pointed out due to lack of coordination within his party.

Earlier, at the conclusion of the question hour, the PTI’s Murad Rass protested against the taking up of the opposition’s questions while accommodating treasury benches’ members.

“The opposition submits questions and then prepares to discuss the issue but its’ members rarely get a chance to put up supplementary questions,” he said.

Speaker Rana Iqbal brushed aside Rass’ complaint, telling him the question hour was held according to rules and procedures of the assembly.

During the question hour on health department, parliamentary secretary for health Khawaja Imran Nazir said some 35pc basic health units (BHUs) in the province were non-functional as most of the doctors did not want to serve in rural areas. He said the government was making efforts to make all the BHUs functional. He said the government would not establish new BHUs until all the existing BHUs were made functional.

About sending doctors to the rural areas, Mr Nazir said the chief minister had held a meeting with young doctors and a breakthrough was expected in this regard. He said the government had also requested the Punjab Public Service Commission to give age relaxation to such doctors.

Responding to another question, he said, the government had launched a crackdown on the quacks and the Punjab Healthcare Commission was also sealing such clinics but now the Lahore High Court (LHC) had barred it from sealing such clinics. He said the government would write a letter to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) to stop airing Hakeems’ unethical messages on radio channels.

The parliamentary secretary said two phases of Institute of Neuro Sciences at General Hospital had been completed and the third phase would be completed next year. He said the government had allocated funds of Rs2.3bn out of which Rs1.6bn had been utilised.

With regard to a question on irregularities in the District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital, Toba Tek Singh, the speaker referred the matter to the Standing Committee on C&W and sought a report in two weeks.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2016