KARACH, June 12: The PPP, Sindh, on Sunday criticized the new provincial budget and maintained that it failed to reflect aspirations of the people of Sindh. Addressing a press conference, PPP leader Nisar Ahmad Khuhro, who is also leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly, said the charged expenditure, which the assembly could neither question nor disapprove, showed that purchase of transport for the governor’s secretariat and his military secretary had increased from Rs160,000 of the last year’s budget estimate, to Rs309,900 in the revised estimate.

Flanked by Murad Ali Shah and Shazia Marri, PPP’s spokesperson on finance, he said inflated gas bills had been shown with Rs4 million having been demanded for the Psychiatric Institute, Hyderabad, and Rs2 million for Sheikh Zayed Women’s Hospital, Larkana.

He said that the Karachi Race Course Club, apart from getting Rs1.5 million grants, got another Rs4 million in the revised estimates, under the very ambiguous head of ‘replacement of important items’.

Inflated estimates of electricity have been given at Rs34 million for the health department secretariat, Rs79 million for the irrigation department secretariat, Rs91 million for SIDA Hyderabad’s managing director and Rs78 million for chief engineer (development) Hyderabad.

All these establishments, he said, had budget estimates running into a few thousand only.

Mr Khuhro said that with the new budget, the tradition of ‘no detail for demands’ had been set. “Lump sum of millions are demanded without any reason or justification and grant-in-aid (2005-06) being Rs13 billion remains without any explanation about the beneficiary. This is a blatant attempt to keep people uninformed about how many deserving segments have been ignored, like special people and Hindu community which had been meted out the same treatment last year,” he added.

In state trading, they showed Rs8.3 billion profit, yet they demanded a wheat subsidy of Rs3.9 billion. “Why the subsidy is required when such a substantial profit has been shown?” he asked.

PPP legislators Jam Mehtab, Dr Sikandar Mandhro, Dr Mahreen Bhutto, Ms Saira Shahliani and Rafique Engineer were also present at the press conference.