ISLAMABAD: National Assembly Spea­ker Asad Qaiser has hinted at further delay in the formation of house committees when he expressed the hope that he would be able to constitute them during the next session scheduled for Dec 10.

Talking to reporters after his meeting with Punjab Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi here on Tuesday, Mr Qaiser stated that he was in contact with both the government and opposition parties over the issue and hopefully it would soon be resolved ‘amicably’.

“I hope when there is a new assembly session, committees will be constituted,” Mr Qaiser said.

Responding to a question, he said the issue of chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was basically between the government and the opposition.

“You know that actually the decision is to be made by the government and the opposition. I am hopeful that this issue will also be resolved soon,” the speaker said.

According to the tentative parliamentary calendar, the sixth regular NA session was scheduled to start from Nov 26, but it was delayed for two weeks with mutual understanding between the government and the opposition.

Mr Qaiser said that plans were afoot to hold a conference of speakers of all the legislatures in the country to benefit from each other’s experiences.

He said that during his five-year tenure as speaker, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly had passed some 172 acts and he believed that some of those legislations like the right to information and the act about usury could be beneficial to other provinces as well. He expressed the hope that parliament would work for the betterment of the people. He said the provincial and federal governments would have to work together to solve the problems faced by the country, which was passing through a difficult economic situation.

Speaking on the occasion, Pervaiz Elahi expressed concern over the behaviour of the opposition members in the Punjab Assembly, but hoped that they would also participate in the public welfare legislations. He alleged that the previous government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz had stopped a number of projects initiated by him as chief minister, causing a loss of Rs200 billion to the province.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2018