July 10, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 24, 1428

BADIN, July 9: The district council on Monday passed a Rs2,127.089 million budget with a surplus of Rs1.006 million by majority vote of 37 members amid protests and boycott by a group of members.

Twenty-four members, mostly belonging to treasury benches and only two belonging to Awam Dost Panel, boycotted the budget session on grounds that they were being ignored by the district nazim.

As soon as the session started, union council nazims including Riaz Ahmed Taharani, Abdul Aziz Memon and Mohammad Ismail Rahimoon stood up and raised objections to the budget proposal.They also complained that they had not been provided copies of the budget.

“We do not have any funds for carrying out development works in our union councils,” they said and termed the budget discriminatory. Later, they observed a sit-in outside the council hall and demanded that debate on the budget which the District Nazim Ali Anwar Halepoto had presented on Saturday should be deferred to Tuesday.

The budget put aside Rs889.158 million and Rs349.238 million for education and health sectors, respectively and Rs117.7 million for community development and Rs118.9 million for the DCO’s office.

He said that Rs2 million had been allocated for each union council for carrying out development works and monthly grant of each union council had been doubled from Rs100,000 to Rs200,000. Each member of the council would now receive Rs1,000 a day for attending the session as against Rs300 a day in past, he said. Mr Halepoto praised a US-based philanthropist, Dr Murtaza, for donating a CT scan machine worth Rs25 million to the Badin Civil Hospital.

AT: Activists of Awami Tehrik and Sindhiani Tehrik on Monday staged a rally against the Kario Ghanwar police for implicating 16 women and children in false cases.

The participants of the rally marched on main thoroughfares of the city before observing a sit-in on the Badin-Karachi, Badin-Jhuddo roads for over an hour.

The leaders warned that if the cases were not withdrawn within 24 hours, they would spread the protest campaign across the province.