KARACHI: Lawmakers’ glaring lack of interest in the Sindh Assembly proceedings on Tuesday deprived the opposition members of the opportunity to move their bills, resolutions and other business introduced or initiated by them on the private members’ day as the sitting, attended by only five members, lasted for hardly two minutes without taking any agenda due to lack of quorum.

Later, talking to the media on the premises of the assembly, opposition members belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan said that the speaker put off the sitting in haste.

Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani looked irked to find only five members — three from treasury and two from the opposition — present in the house during the sitting, which began at 10.50am, some 50 minutes behind its scheduled time.

“We had decided to hold private members’ day today but the house is still empty,” he said while adjourning the session till Friday.

The business on the agenda included a privilege motion of PTI’s Saeed Ahmed and an adjournment motion of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s Syed Abdur Rasheed.

In his privilege motion, the PTI member had said that he had tried to meet the provincial labour secretary who excused saying that he was busy and referred him to the labour director of district West. He said the labour director also did not receive him saying that he could be available only next week.

Besides, there were as many as 10 private bills which were to be introduced by PTI’s Dr Seema Zia, Firdous Shamim Naqvi, Rabia Azfar Nizami, Omer Omari, Arsalan Taj Ghumman, Khurrum Sher Zaman and MQM-P’s Rana Ansar. None of the movers, however, turned up.

Moreover, there were three private resolutions on the agenda which were to be moved by MQM-P’s Muhammad Hussain, MMA’s Mr Rasheed and Grand Democratic Alliance’s Nand Kumar Goklani. None of them was present in the house.

MQM-P’s Hussain argued that the speaker should have adjourned the sitting for 10 minutes to enable the members to join the session instead of putting it off to Friday.

PTI’s Naqvi said that the session was put off to sabotage the private members’ day. However, he conceded that the opposition members also showed negligence as they did not turn up on time.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2021