KARACHI, March 20: Members of the civil society organizations on Saturday stressed that legislators, being representatives of people, must have a role in preparing, monitoring and executing budget. They were expressing their views at a pre-budget public forum meeting organized by Pakistan People?s Party-Parliamentarian?s spokespersons for Finance Ms Shazia Marri and Mr Ahmad Ali Jalbani. The meeting, held in the Sindh Assembly?s committee room, was chaired by opposition leader in the house Nisar Ahmad Khuhro.

Emphasis was laid on the role of civil society organizations as lobbyists. It was noted that the private sector had never before been invited to contribute towards budget-making process. During the discussion, it was also suggested that allocations for defence and intelligence agencies should also be scrutinized in a transparent manner. Mr Khuhro referred to the lack of implementation of policies and social weaknesses. In order to overcome such difficulties, he stressed, people should be involved in pre-budget forums.

In the context of government?s failure in implementing decisions of the assembly, Mr Khuhro pointed out that the decision of providing free education up to Matric and compulsory education to all had not been implemented in Sindh. This showed social and other weaknesses of the governance.

Speaking on the inadequacies of the current budget process, the participants highlighted that the budget needed to be an instrument of change. Gender sensitization was considered a top priority for all, and included the establishment of a gender sensitization department in Sindh to oversee gender policies in all other departments. They spoke on the need to have long-term policies and goals to be set and met.

They were of the view that budget sadly lacked adequate allocations for health sectors. They called for more allocation to improve primary health care, basic health units, district health units and drug rehabilitation centres.

It was noted that taxation system was ineffective, as majority of people did not pay taxes unless coerced. The participants said that everyone must pay taxes in order to increase revenue collection.

It was pointed out that the minimum wage in Sindh had remained around Rs2,500 since the past eight years, out of which usually 25-30 per cent was not given to labourers. The budget must deal with increasing the minimum wage.

The speakers noted that bulk of the federal budget was devoted to defence and intelligence agencies which should be open to scrutiny and debate. It was, therefore, recommended that legislature should be involved at the formulation stage, possibly by soliciting objective input from legislators.

The also called for providing training to legislators in financial issues. They proposed that budget policies and priorities should be set out at least two months in advance of the budget speech to allow a full debate before the start of new fiscal year.

The pre-budget forum also called for abolishing unnecessary provisions and ensuring more access to information about departments, including defence, and also ensuring parliamentary accountability in defence budgets.

Deputy parliamentary leader of PPP in the Sindh Assembly Syed Murad Ali Shah, MPAs Anwar Mahar, Irfan Ali Shah and Rafiq Engineer, as well as Chairman of the Karachi Stock Exchange Yaseen Lakhani, President of Engro Asad Umar, CEO of Raasta Group Seemi Kamal, Naib Nazim of Lyari Town Malik Mohammad Khan, Chairman of the SITE Association Ikhtiar Baig and leading journalists, were among those who attended the meeting.