LAHORE: The Punjab government is spending its own resources on the Orange Line Metro Train Project and has not got any loan for it, claims Minister for Transport Chaudhry Sher Ali.

The minister’s claim in the Punjab Assembly on Friday stoked a controversy as it flies in the face of the official stance the government has maintained all along.

PML-Q’s Khadija Umer posed a question whether Punjab was spending its own resources on the project or it had got loan and if it’s loan, how much it had got and on what terms and conditions. The minister claimed in a reply, “Punjab is spending its own resources and the question of loans’ condition does not arise.”

The Opposition was quick to pounce on the answer but failed to extract anything more. It kept accusing the government of changing position and concealing details of a project costing more than Rs200 billion to the provincial exchequer.

“It has continuously been changing positions on the subject at the cost of public trust,” Mian Aslam Iqbal kept shouting when next question was asked.

For the opposition, Mian Aslam Iqbal’s query about details of the Metro Bus Service was also something worthy of being talked about. “What is the operational cost of the project, how many travelers use it on daily basis and what’s the subsidy position”?

Each ticket of the Lahore Metro Bus Service costs the provincial government Rs43.86 in subsidy and total grant under this head in the last four years comes to around Rs2.07 billion, responded Chaudhy Sher Ali.

He said 472 million people travelled by the bus, with daily average ranging between 119,000 (2015) and 129,000 (2016). During the last year (2015-16) around Rs40 million were spent on electricity bills and Rs29 million on diesel for generators.

Mian Aslam wanted to know for how long the government plans to afford this kind of subsidy? Or, why doesn’t the government try to bring the operational cost down? “The operational cost, already at the bare minimum, could only be brought down at the cost of facilities and the service,” Mr Ali responded.

The proceedings, which lasted less than an hour, were animated in the sense that long pending questions of the opposition members were answered and they generated lively debate within the house. Since the Treasury had been avoiding answers on the Metro Bus Service and, of late, Orange Train Project, it has found a convenient way of reducing the number of questions.

On a normal day, the Question Hour lasts an hour and list contains 35 questions. On Friday, the list had only 10 questions and they were rushed through within 30 minutes.

The House, which met at 10.38am instead of 9am, took up some adjournment motions and most of them dropped because the mover was absent. By the time official business of general discussion on food was about to start, Ahsan Riaz Fatyana stood up and told the Chair that neither the minister for food nor departmental bureaucracy was present in the House.

“Who is going to answer our concerns or take note of suggestions. And the presence is so thin. At least get the quorum complete,” he said and requested the headcount. The presence was less than half of the requirement and the Chair ordered ringing of bells for five minutes. Later, the House was adjourned for 10 minutes to try to get the numbers right. It did not happen for the next 40 minutes when stipulated time for day expired and the Chair adjourned the House till Monday afternoon.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2017