PESHAWAR: Opposition Leader in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Akram Khan Durrani on Friday demanded the formation of a commission to probe the delivery of buses for the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service from China even before the completion of civil work.

On a point of order in the assembly here, Mr Durrani revealed that the Cantonment Board had asked the Peshawar Development Authority, the project’s executing agency, to pay an additional amount of Rs30 million as the construction activities ‘disturbed’ the residents of cantonment area.

“We have heard for the first time that the project executing agency has been asked to pay for creating disturbance,” he said.

The opposition leader asked Speaker Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani, who chaired the session, to constitute a commission comprising members of both treasury and opposition benches to probe all aspects of the BRT project, including eruption of fire in buses, which were imported from China around two years ago.

He said the commission should probe reasons for the premature delivery of buses even though the civil work was not finished.

Mr Durrani said the buses loaded with sandbags were being run on the BRT track to ascertain the cause of fire.

Opposition leader tells PA cantt board demanding Rs30m for ‘disturbance’ caused by construction activity

He said a major Chinese bus manufacturer’s bids for providing hybrid buses for BRT were rejected and the contract was awarded to a company with no experience of making hybrid vehicles.

The opposition leader said surprisingly, sandbags were being loaded onto the BRT buses after delivery for load test.

He said it had never happened that the number of commuters had been fixed for a metro transport service to prevent overloading.

The BRT service was suspended on Sept 17 after incidents of fire in four buses within a month of its launch by Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Engineers were called from China to determine the causes of fire.

The TransPeshawar Company owned by the provincial government has announced the resumption of bus service from Saturday.

The Chinese company has delivered 128 buses. Under the agreement, it will supply a total of 220 hybrid buses.

The opposition leader also spoke about the recent spike in the Covid-19 cases in the country, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and claimed that the government was planning to re-impose smart lockdown to contain the pandemic.

He said an official, who was the overall in charge of efforts against the pandemic, had declared that the government was spending Rs2.5 million on every Covid-19 patient.

“The figure is unrealistic as the treatment of coronavirus has yet to be found,” he said.

Mr Durrani complained that the children attended classes once a week but private educational institutions charged them full fee.

He also asked the chair to form a committee to check the funds released and utilised during the pandemic.

Member of the opposition Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal Inayatullah Khan, on a point of order, expressed shock at the killing of people in a stampede outside Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

He said Afghan citizens faced difficulties in obtaining Pakistani visas, so the government should simplify the process.

The assembly passed a resolution with a majority vote condemning the speeches of former prime minister and PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif and other leaders of the Pakistan Democratic Movement against state institutions.

A woman MPA of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek Insaf moved the resolution amid protest by the opposition benches.

The resolution said Nawaz Sharif had leveled baseless allegations against the state institutions and their heads in an attempt to discredit those institutions.

The resolution mover said the PDM leaders targeted state institutions in Karachi rally.

“The PDM leaders should not malign state institutions, while the government should stop the baseless propaganda against these institutions,” she said.

Earlier, the house referred a calling attention notice of PPP member Nighat Yasmin Orakzai to its standing committee on home. It was about the security of job of ‘cadet law instructor officers’.

Speaker Ghani issued a ruling stopping the inspector general of police from removing the law instructor officer until the committee completes the task.

The assembly passed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Public Private Partnership Bill, 2020. The sitting was adjourned until 2pm on Monday.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2020