ISLAMABAD, Nov 24: Ministers on Thursday faced criticism from both the treasury and the opposition senators for, what they said, giving incomplete and wrong replies to questions on the floor of the house. PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar alleged that Federal Minister for Petroleum Amanullah Khan Jadoon had not furnished complete reply to his question regarding pricing mechanism adopted by the Oil Companies Advisory Committee.

He said he had asked the minister how much inland freight margin had been allowed to “each oil marketing company from January to June and July to December 2004. However, he alleged, the minister did not provide the names of the firms to save several influential people behind these companies. He said the oil companies had accumulated huge money in the name of transportation charges.

Minister of State for Petroleum Mohammad Naseer Mengal claimed that the ministry had provided a comprehensive reply to the question. He said the matter of oil price adjustment was already under consideration of the standing committee. Mr Mengal said he was ready to arrange a meeting of Mr Babar with the representatives of the oil companies.

Chairman of the standing committee Dilawar Abbas said he would invite Mr Babar to attend the next meeting of the committee so that he could raise the issue. He said the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority would soon be given the responsibility of determining oil prices.

Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro referred the matter to the standing committee.

Minister of State for Interior Dr Shahzad Waseem also faced a similar situation when in response to a question regarding the number of children in various jails he said the ministry had been waiting for reply from the provincial governments. He said only Balochistan had provided the reply to the question, according to which no child was in any prison of the province. He asked the chairman to direct the provincial governments to submit replies to the questions on time.

The Senate chairman said he would personally look into the matter and asked the minister to provide him the record of the communication made between the ministry and the provincial governments.

Ruling party Senator Kulsoom Perveen even rejected the reply given by the Balochistan government and said she had herself met children in the province’s prisons. She said a number of girls were languishing in Balochistan jails and the government had stated that there was no children in the prison.

Dr Shahzad Waseem said he had given the reply provided by the Balochistan government. He said if the provincial government had provided wrong information, then the senator should give a notice in this regard.

The state minister for interior again faced criticism from the members when the opposition senators pointed out discrepancies in the figures provided by the minister in response to a question of MMA’s Ismail Buledi regarding the number of persons appointed in passport offices since 2002 with a province-wise breakdown.

Dr Waseem said 16 persons were appointed in the department of immigration and passports on regular basis and 241 had been appointed on contract basis in machine readable passport project. He said out of the contractual employees, 128 belonged to Punjab, 33 were from the NWFP, 8 from Northern Areas and Fata, 46 from Sindh, nine from Balochistan, four from Azad Kashmir, while three had been appointed on disabled quota and 16 on merit.

Senator Hamidullah Jan said it seemed that the ministers had not come to the house with proper homework. He said the minister had stated that a total of 241 employees had been appointed on contractual basis while aggregate of the data came to 247.