LAHORE: Opposition leader in Punjab Assembly Mian Mahmoodur Rasheed has called a meeting of parliamentary leaders of all opposition parties next week to prepare proposals for the 2016-17 budget.

The opposition leader has also constituted a committee comprising economists, educationists, jurists and health professionals and entrusted them with a task to prepare proposals for the budget by Monday (tomorrow). The proposals will then be discussed in the parliamentary leaders’ meeting and eventually presented to the government in the next budget session of the Punjab Assembly.

Speaking to media persons here on Saturday, Mr Rasheed said the government must allocate maximum resources for education, health, safe drinking water and other public welfare projects. He observed that the government did not spend even half of the budget allocated for public welfare projects during 2015-16. For this reason, he said, the state of education, health and other basic facilities was dismal.

He said the opposition would take the treasury to task in the next assembly session for not spending allocated budget on public welfare projects. The opposition leader said the united opposition in Punjab Assembly would boycott the budget session, if it doesn’t not consider the opposition’s budget proposals in the next session.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2016