ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar seemed quite excited by the applause he received from ruling party members as he unveiled the new budget in the National Assembly on Friday.

However, this was before a hasty damper came from Opposition Leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah, who took up the cause of the government’s own employees.

Mr Shah was due to open general debate on the budget for the fiscal year 2015-16 on Monday, but he insisted on giving the government a piece of his mind over what he termed “insufficient relief” given to government employees and pensioners.

“It is a big injustice,” he said, talking about measures that included a 7.5 per cent ad-hoc allowance on running pay for federal government employees and as a similar increase in the net pension of all its former employees.

Know more: Ishaq Dar eyes 7pc growth by tenure end

“And it is another injustice that the opposition leader is being stopped (from speaking),” he complained after Speaker Ayaz Sadiq cut him short when he reminded him that he could speak his mind when he opened debate in the house on Monday afternoon.

In the brief remarks that he could manage to make after Mr Dar wrapped up his nearly two-hour speech, Mr Shah talked only about government employees.

During the Pakistan People’s Party rule, government employees had been liberally given a combined salary raise of 125 per cent over five years.

He said the finance minister had talked of allocations worth hundreds of billions of rupees in his speech but made excuses about resource constraints when it came to government employees and their pensions.

Mr Dar also faced some booing — ostensibly a show of disappointment — from opposition benches when at the fag-end of his speech, he spoke of envisaged support for widows of victims of suicide attacks.

However, he was unfazed and continued speaking of his government’s performance with gusto, as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif listened intently.

At the end of his speech, applause for the minister came only from Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz lawmakers, with the opposition, as usual, scrupulously refrained from joining in.

Mr Dar appeared disappointed when Mr Shah and other PPP members responded only with silence to an off-the-text request to them to clap at his announcement of an allocation increase for the Benazir Income Support Programme from Rs97 billion to Rs102 billion.

Before being embarrassed by the opposition leader, the finance minister’s speech did not begin auspiciously either. Just before he started speaking, journalists in the press gallery staged a two-minute walkout to protest the non-payment of salaries to the staff of certain media organisations. But the walkout, which brought Information and Broadcasting Minister Pervaiz Rashid out of the house to reassure the protesters, was chiefly concerned with the troubles of the beleaguered channel Bol.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2015

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