ISLAMABAD, June 2: The opposition cried out against supply of contaminated drinking water causing diseases and killing people in many cities as the National Assembly began its budget session with a poorly attended sitting on Friday.

After being accused of negligence in tackling the recent spread of gastroenteritis due to contaminated water supplies and reports of many deaths, the government agreed with an opposition proposal that a bipartisan lower house committee should probe into the matter and take it up with provincial governments.

Nine members from both the opposition and treasury benches spoke during a debate on several opposition adjournment motions about waterborne diseases in Faisalabad and Sheikhupura, Karachi, Hyderabad and Badin before the house was adjourned until 5:30pm on Monday when the federal budget for fiscal 2006-07 would be resented.

Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain selected the motions for an immediate debate on the first day of the session because he said the matter could not be taken up during the budget debate.

In the absence of Health Minister Mohammad Nasir Khan, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi said the problem of contaminated water due to old municipal waterworks was at present afflicting big cities and could soon hit smaller towns if no remedies were planned.

He referred to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s repeated assurances to provide clean drinking water to the country’s population, but said that immediately a house committee be set up to study the matter and take it up with the provincial governments. However no formal decision was made before the issue was talked out.

The proposal for forming a house committee was originally made by Raja Nadir Pervez of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) who said his home district of Faisalabad alone had about 29,000 gastroenteritis patients and that several of them, mostly children, had died.

“It is a criminal negligence for which law should take its course,” he said about the role of what he called ‘totally confused’ authorities, adding that the situation would have been much worse if local political and social organisation had not come forward to help sufferers.

Textile Industry Minister Mushtaq Ali Cheema, who hails from the same district, said Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi had taken cognizance of the situation in Faisalabad and sanctioned Rs220 million for rehabilitate the town’s water supply system besides announcing a compensation of Rs100,000 for each dead person.

Mr Farid Piracha of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) said the problem concerned the whole country rather than a single city and regretted that “now in the 21st century we are not even in the 19th century in the matter of drinking water supplies”.

Another MMA member, Mohammad Hanif Abbasi, said the situation was not much different in his constituency town of Rawalpindi where, according to him, more than half of tubewells meant to supply drinking water were shut down and water pipelines in many areas were damaged.

Fauzia Habib of the People’s Party Parliamentarians said every second home in Rawalpindi had a hepatitis B patient because of the contaminated water and asked the government to declare its water supply plans for every district.

Sahibzada Abul Khair Mohammad Zubair of the MMA said an amount of Rs500 million sanctioned for a water filtration plant in Hyderabad some years ago by the then Sindh governor Mohammedmian Soomro was not made available because the nazim of the town at the time was from the PPP. He said the same amount should now be used to set up a filtration plant there.

ECL RULING RESERVED: Earlier, Speaker Amir Hussain reserved his ruling over a privilege motion moved by Abdul Rauf Mengal of the Balochistan National Party (Mengal) about the inclusion of his name and of some other Baloch leaders on the government’s Exit Control List (ECL) to bar them from foreign travel.