KARACHI, June 27: Heated speeches opposing the proposed budget of the city government for the next fiscal year dominated the city council session here on Thursday.

Opposition members staged a walkout over being given only one day to study the budget and over the registration of the names of members wanting to speak on it.

They alleged that the treasury side had played foul by registering the names from the 22nd of June, while the budget was presented on the 25th; ninety names were already present at the start of the session, leaving no time for opposition groups to speak during the three-day budget session.

However, they ended the boycott when their demand to speak first was acknowledged. Saed Ghani in his speech deplored the absence of the city Nazim from the house as it was he who had presented the budget.

He said only one million rupees had been allocated for the development of the union councils whereas it must be Rs10 million. He said the city needed improvement at the lowest level and the UCs were the smallest units of the devolution system and were nearest to the masses.

He said about 330 million rupees were being spent on the improvement of the roads, whereas the defunct KMC had allocated Rs270 million for the purpose, out of which only 70 million rupees were spent. This, he said, showed that the conditions of the roads were quite satisfactory.

He also stressed that Rs10 million allocated to combat emergencies should be directly under the council instead of the city Nazim.

Jafar-ul-Hasan, Ghulam Abbas Talpur and Ghulam Akber expressed similar views, pointing out that only Rs20 million had been allocated for the 1400 rural areas of Karachi, whereas an equal amount had been allocated for the improvement of Sharae- Faisal. They also criticized the allocation of Rs20 million in the budget to control corruption in the system.

Some women councillors criticized the discretionary powers of the city Nazim to use 150 million rupees under the head of special development schemes, saying it would only benefit the towns closer to where the Nazim was

Several members of the treasury bench also expressed gestures in support of the arguments presented by the opposition members. Some members of the Al-Khidmat group supported the idea that more funds be given to the UCs.—PPI