ISLAMABAD, June 20: Opposition members on Tuesday assailed the government’s privatisation policy that most of them saw as harmful to national interests as the National Assembly discussed and voted on budget demands for grants for various federal ministries.

The combined opposition also staged a token walkout after Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain dismissed a demand that the Privatisation and Investment Minister Zahid Hamid explain the revision of the sale deed of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) with UAE’s Etisalat much after last year’s bidding.

The government came under fire also during discussion and voting on hundreds of opposition’s cut motions on demands for grants for the ministries of petroleum and natural resources, religious affairs and water and power.

But the opposition appeared even more angry on the issue of the privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills, the PTCL and Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, accusing the government of selling national assets cheaply and using the proceeds to make up for budget deficit rather than retire debts and reduce poverty.

All cut motions were rejected and demands approved by voice vote.

The proceedings, which began in the morning, became livelier in the afternoon after journalists ended a three-day boycott of proceedings to protest against the murder of a reporter from tribal area, Hayatullah Khan.

“Everything is being given away cheaply,” Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed of the People’s Party Parliamentarians said.

“We will not let them sell (the enterprises) according to wishes,” he said and added: “We will not let them sell Pakistan bit by bit.”

The PPP member said he feared the government would now sell four more institutions — Water and Power Development Authority, Railways, Oil and Gas Development Company Limited and Pakistan State Oil — in the same manner and added: “Tomorrow somebody can call for selling this parliament or the military to cut expenses.”

Abdul Sattar Afghani of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal accused the government functionaries of selling state enterprises to their friends starting from the privatisation of the Muslim Commercial Bank in 1990s. He called the sale of Habib Bank Limited as the ‘biggest tragedy’ before the speaker cut him short by ordering his mike to be switched off.

“He must behave.... I simply don’t tolerate it,” the speaker remarked about Mr Afghani’s insistence to speak, but later relented on an intervention by MMA leader Liaquat Baloch to allow one-and-half minutes more to the member from Karachi, who urged the Supreme Court to order a scrutiny of all privatisation deals.

Some MMA members used the discussion to question bona fides of the members of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) and judges of the Federal Shariat Court, one of them even questioning their religious beliefs as Muslims.

SPEAKER’S RESPONSE: But the speaker seemed to have cold feet about demands from some ruling coalition members to expunge the remarks, saying he was not well-versed with religious matters and would go through record of the proceedings to decide which words must be deleted. The speaker and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Niazi agreed to hold a debate during the next session about previous CII reports.