KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly on Monday unanimously supported a long-awaited military offensive in North Waziristan and observed that the whole nation stood behind the armed forces in the fight against “the enemies of Pakistan”.

The house unanimously adopted two resolutions — tabled by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Dr Sikander Mandhro and Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Irum Azeem Farooque and signed by members sitting on both sides of the aisle — when put to a vote.

The MPAs, through the two resolutions, strongly supported the army operation “Zerb-i-Azb” in North Waziristan and wished the armed forces success in elimination of militants and terrorism in the country.

Discussion on budget begins

The house, which was presided over by Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani, began discussing the Rs686.179 billion budget for the financial year 2014-15 on Monday.

Twelve lawmakers —11 from the treasury side and one from the opposition benches — discussed the budget.

Interestingly, despite sitting on the treasury benches, seven lawmakers of the MQM and one of the Pakistan Peoples Party criticised the Sindh government for its budgetary allocations in the head of the next year’s annual development programme (ADP).

The MQM legislators termed the budget ‘unbalanced’, arguing that it ignored the pressing needs of urban centres, Karachi and Hyderabad in particular.

They also criticised the imposition of several indirect taxes on the people, including tax on clinical laboratories, laundries and dry-cleaning services, and said that it was unjust not to bring agriculture income under the tax net.

They also said that a public sector university for Hyderabad was necessary since between 18,000 and 20,000 students were being deprived of higher education on an annual basis. “We are not against the allocation of huge funds for development of cities like Benazirabad and Larkana...We only want to draw the attention of the chief minister towards the policy of ignoring the major cities,” said one of the MQM lawmakers.

They demanded a Rs4bn special development package for Hyderabad to improve civic facilities like water supply, a better sewerage system and to repair its infrastructure. The allocation of a mere Rs240 million was insufficient for a city of over 35m people, they added.

They said that the government should cut down its non-development expenditures and pursue the principle to utilise the taxes for development in the areas from where they were being generated.

About a claim made by CM Qaim Ali Shah in his budget speech that Rs42bn had been allocated for Karachi’s schemes, the MQM lawmakers said that the funds allocated for the schemes of the Chief Minister House, the Governor House, the Sindh Assembly building were included in Rs42bn and the real amount for Karachi city was not over Rs22bn.

The criticism by the MQM lawmaker was so severe that at one stage opposition MPA Imtiaz Shaikh of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional stood and said sarcastically that the members of the treasury benches were violating the privilege of the opposition by making such critical speeches.

Shabbir Qaimkhani of the MQM said that like rural population, low-income people in the urban areas should also be given some subsidy.

Waqar Hussain Shah said that the Karachi’s Korangi, Central and East districts were completely ignored in the ADP.

Khalid bin Wilayat said that Karachi was totally ignored in the next fiscal year’s ADP as out of 706 schemes only six were for Karachi. Even a smaller district like Khairpur was given 110 schemes in the ADP, he added.

Waseem Qureshi of the MQM said that the Sindh government had set up a bank with Rs10bn paid-up capital, but it failed to table its audited report in the house.

MQM’s Panjumal Bheel said that the government had allocated huge funds for his district, Tharparkar, which if utilised judiciously, could bring a lot of improvement in the life of the local people.

He thanked the government for allocation to protect temples and other places of worship of minorities and demanded that people of minority communities be recruited as guards for their sacred places.

Khalid Ahmed and Rashid Khilji of the MQM also spoke.

PPP’s Ahmad Ali Pitafi criticised his own government for ignoring his hometown, Mirpur Mathelo in the Ghotki district, for which only Rs40m was allocated.

He regretted that during the last six years the PPP government failed to eliminate corruption in the bureaucracy, as no posting in the district was made on merit. He said all MPAs were equal and the government ought to treat them on an equality basis and did not divide them on the basis of liking and disliking.

Three other PPP legislators — Dr Sohrab Sarki, Irum Khalid and Ghazala Sial — praised the performance of the government in the last year and termed the new budget a people-friendly budget.

Dr Rafique Bhanban of the PML-F, who was the only lawmaker from the opposition benches to make it, said that the government had given funds to the PPP lawmakers but not to the legislators belonging to the opposition parties as if they did not live in Sindh.

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2014