KARACHI: Despite the opposition benches’ resistance to stall it from being presented for vote, the Sindh Assembly on Thursday passed a law to allow a fourth examination board to administer examinations at all academic levels up to higher secondary or its equivalent.

The Ziauddin University Examination Board Bill, 2018 was presented by senior minister Nisar Khuhro in the house, which was resisted by Leader of the Opposition Khwaja Izharul Hasan, who said such an effort would further affect the quality of government-run boards.

It was among the four new bills passed by the assembly in the twilight of its existence.

The other three bills, which had been passed earlier and the governor had returned to the assembly for reconsideration, had again been passed by the house.

‘You are making mockery of our educational system’

Besides, the house also approved the report of a special committee on the Sindh Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2018.

The opposition leader mildly opposed other bills as well arguing that the assembly’s life was going to expire in four days, thus, such legislation should not be done in a hurry.

However, when the bill about the establishment of the Ziauddin board was introduced Khwaja Izhar initially suggested deferring the bill to another day to allow the members to discuss it in detail.

He said three systems of examination were already in practice in the province and introducing another board would further complicate things.

Instead, he added, the opposition wanted to see a synchronised system of the existing three educational boards — the public sector boards, the Aga Khan Board and the Cambridge system — to allow a level playing field to all students irrespective of which class of society they represented.

He said when the new board itself said it had been devised on the pattern of the Aga Khan Board, what made it necessary?

Law Minister Zia Lanjar said another board would not make matters worse, instead, it would help the people. He said more such boards should be established.

Khwaja Izhar said the new board would virtually decimate the government’s own examination system. He feared the new board would be encouraged in such a way that institutions offering intermediate education would be forced to join it.

“You are making mockery of our educational system,” he remarked.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Faisal Subzwari said it seemed the government was not satisfied with its own examination boards. He asked the government to improve performance of their boards, as admission of their inefficiency posed a question mark over Sindh’s education ministry and the government as a whole.

He said uniformity in the system was the best solution.

Minister Khuhro said allowing another examination board to operate in Sindh was aimed at enhancing higher secondary education. He said the public sector examination boards did not have a good reputation generally and some of their officials had even been put into jail.

He said the new board would create competition and force the government boards to improve themselves.

Mr Subzwari said those reasons being given by the ministers were hollow.

Khwaja Izhar said for years the Karachi board’s enrolment had not increased because other boards were attracting most students. He said he would triple the matriculation board’s enrolment within five years if it was given to him.

After the debate, the chair asked Mr Khuhro to read it out clause by clause, and the house passed it by majority vote.

Other bills

The house also passed The Sindh Coastal Development Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2018, The Government College University Hyderabad (Amendment) Bill, 2018 and The Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Human Resource Research and Development Board (Amendment) Bill, 2018.

Besides, it reconsidered and passed the three bills, returned by the governor, which were: The Begum Nusrat Bhutto Women University Sukkur Bill, 2018, The Shaikh Ayaz University Shikarpur Bill, 2018, and The Sindh (Regularisation of Contract Employees of Khairpur Medical College Khairpur) Bill, 2018.

Video of ‘NAB raid’ on speaker’s house

As the day’s session resumed, Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani apprised the house about a fake viral video, which has extensively been run on social media in which the house of a certain Arab moneyed person was falsely portrayed as being Mr Durrani’s.

“The video on social media shows a house, which someone attributed as my house, with the notion that it was filmed after a raid by the National Accountability Bureau team there. It is totally fake and is designed for my character assassination,” said Mr Durrani.

He said he would take the person who had originally put the video on social media to court.

Khwaja Izhar expressed his solidarity with the chair and condemned those who were involved in the act.

Pakistan Muslim League-Functional’s parliamentary leader Nand Kumar said the media should refrain from running unverified stuff.

Former chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah said the whole house should condemn it.

CM’s ‘curse’ speech

The opposition leader demanded that the chair expunge the word ‘curse’ from Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah’s wind-up speech during the budget session.

He said the word had hurt the feelings of the opposition benches and a lot of people of the province. He also demanded a clarification from the CM.

Mr Khuhro said the chief minister had not named anyone in his speech. Instead, he added: “We respect and value the opposition parties and (MQM’s) Farooq Sattar himself said in his speech in the National Assembly that they did not demand Sindh’s division.”

Khwaja Izhar said the word would become parliamentary if it was not expunged.

He said Pakistan’s Constitution permitted creation of more administrative units and the “MQM supports more administrative units across Pakistan, which is a fact everyone knows”.

He said he was under immense pressure from his own colleagues who were “encouraged by the deputy speaker’s words when she said (anyone who wanted new administrative units) should table a resolution. It was really hard for me to pacify many of our members who were encouraged by the deputy speaker’s statement”.

Speaker Durrani said he had already asked the assembly staff to expunge all words which were not in conformity with parliamentary expressions.

Power outages

The house adopted an adjournment motion vis-à-vis power outages in the city moved by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Khurram Sher Zaman. However, when the discussion about its admissibility was continuing, the assembly building’s power supply went out, which the house was told was due to a breakdown and not because of loadshedding.

The speaker said a debate on the adjournment motion would be held on Friday.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2018

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