KARACHI: The controversy over the call for administrative division of Sindh once again echoed in the provincial assembly on Thursday, which was the fourth day of general discussion on Sindh budget 2016-17 and the supplementary budget of the current year.

Reacting to the long-standing demand of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, PPP lawmakers said: “The division of Sindh in any form will not be tolerated. Urdu-speaking people are part of Sindh, they ought to become sons of the soil.”

The other issues, besides the routine speeches of terming the budget people-friendly by the treasury members and no more than a figurative puzzle from the other side of the aisle, raised in the house were related to garbage dumps, billboards in the city and the condition of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre after being devolved to the provincial government.

In all, 16 lawmakers across the house had the opportunity to speak on the budget on the fourth day of the general discussion. They were Pakistan Peoples Party legislators Syed Sardar Shah, Abdul Sattar Rajper, Bahadur Khan Dahri, Fayaz Ali Butt, Nusrat Sultana and Aijaz Shah; Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf lawmakers Dr Seema Zia and Khurram Sherzaman; Amir Haider Shah Sheerazi and Sorath Thebo of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz; Hargun Das Ahuja, Nadeem Rizvi, Mohammad Yousuf Shahwani, Azeem Farooui, Rauf Siddiqui of the MQM, Jam Madad Ali and Mohammad Rashid Shah of the PML-Functional.

‘Urdu-speaking people are part of Sindh, they ought to become sons of the soil’

In an emotional speech, PPP lawmaker Syed Sardar Shah spoke about tax recovery, law and order, education. He said that development budget could not be utilised due to the intervention of the National Accountability Bureau, Federal Investigation Agency and Pakistan Rangers in the provincial institutions. He said this attitude of the federation with its federating unit was attempt to harm the federation.

He said the people of Sindh considered the Urdu-speaking as their brothers and Sindh as their mother. “We want to tell our brothers that a mother cannot be divided,” he said. Sindh has always been an entity and the call for the administrative division could not be a result of some kind of deprivation but part of planning, the PPP lawmaker remarked. He said Urdu-speaking brothers couldn’t have any sense of deprivation when the president of Pakistan and the governor of Sindh themselves were Urdu-speaking. The Urdu-speaking people should consider themselves son of the soil and ought to love Sindh, he added.

Dr Abdul Sattar Rajper said Sindh division would not be accepted. He also said that three of the four provinces had rejected the Kalabagh dam yet the federal government kept raising the issue of Kalabagh dam.

PTI lawmaker Dr Seema Zia said the budget documents did not reflect the ground realities. She said Karachi had been turned into a forest of billboards with garbage dumps everywhere. She said the JPMC after being devolved to Sindh from the federation had become victim of politics where mismanagement and corruption was rampant. She asked the Sindh government to take its notice.

She further said that all the burden of taxes was on the city while farm income had been exempted from the tax.

PML-F legislator Mohammad Rashid Shah demanded that the targeted operation be extended to the entire Sindh to remove a sense of deprivation of those who had been demanding a separate province. He also highlighted the need to give up step motherly treatment with them and treat them as sons of the soil.

Jam Madad Ali said if the budget had been utilised properly, elected representatives would have been in high esteem among their electorate. He demanded subsidy on tractors and other agriculture implements for the promotion of agriculture.

PML-N lawmaker Amir Haider Shah said Zulfikarabad was a dead project, which was rejected by the people as they had rejected Kalabagh dam. He demanded that Rs14 billion fund allocated in the name of securing the coastal land from sea intrusion be utilised properly to provide relief to poor people.

MQM legislator Hargun Das Ahuja said the condition of hospital in Sindh was very bad where doctors instead of treating the people were running private clinics.

Nadeem Razi said Sindh contributed 70 per cent income to the exchequer while its 90 per cent revenue was collected from Karachi and other cities of Sindh. But only a small allocation was made for the cities in the budget, he said, adding that the budget allocated for the rural areas, too, were not utilised properly.

Earlier when the chair called the house in order at 11.20am, leader of opposition Khwaja Izharul Hasan and PPP Parliamentary Party leader Nisar Khuhro expressed their regret over the unpleasant incident in the house at the fag-end of the Thursday session and agreed that no one would call the names of party leadership in their speeches.

Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani said in case of any mistake, the lawmaker ought to extend apology to end the matter. He also advised the lawmakers to avoid personal attacks during the budget discussion.

Later, Mr Khuhro tabled a joint resolution on behalf of the members across the aisle to condemn the ‘venomous attitude’ and ‘discriminatory act’ of the federal water and power authorities with the people of Sindh where people had been experiencing 18- to 20-hour-long outages despite the commitment of uninterrupted power supply at Sehar and Iftar.

The resolution, which was carried unanimously, termed this attitude detrimental to national interests and integrity.

Deputy Speaker Syeda Shehla Raza, who was presiding the session after the break of 90 minutes for Friday prayer, called it a day at 5.45pm.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2016