ISLAMABAD, Aug 15: The opposition in the National Assembly on Wednesday came down on the government for its alleged apathy towards the sufferers of recent rains and floods in Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP and called for prompt and adequate relief.
There was no defence of the government’s performance from the poorly attended ruling benches at the start of a debate on the flood situation as members of opposition parties cited what they saw as official unconcern and in some cases discrimination on political grounds, whether it was remote Chitral in the NWFP, parts of Balochistan or metropolitan Karachi and other parts of Sindh.
The opposition-sought debate, which was originally due to have been held early this month but was overtaken by debates on law and order situation and foreign policy, was extended for another day before the house was adjourned until 9.30am on Thursday.While the religious Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal alliance particularly targeted the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s city administration for the perceived lapses in the country’s commercial capital, which is also hit by chronic power breakdowns, and the federal government’s unconcern in the MMA-ruled NWFP, the People’s Party Parliamentarians accused the authorities of discriminating against its supporters in both Sindh and Balochistan.
The Karachi city government ‘totally failed’ to restore normality there, MMA member Mohammad Hussain Mehanti said as he described what he called the “collapse of the whole (civic) system” due to deadly flooding and power failures while opening the debate and called for proper planning to protect the city’s population from similar calamities in the future.
PPP’s Khalid Iqbal Memon said the government remained ‘deaf and dumb’ to the plight of some 200,000 people affected by floods in his constituency in Qambar-Shahdadkot district in Sindh and called for declaring it a calamity-stricken area, writing off agricultural loans, providing compensation for building new houses and immediate supply of medicines and tents.
Khuda Bakhsh Nizamani of the Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) said not only existing agricultural loans be written off but also new interest-free loans be given to the flood-hit people to help their rehabilitation and proposed a committee of experts should regularly check the condition of old bridges and the Sukkur Barrage to avoid incidents like the recent collapse of the Mississippi bridge in the United States.
EMBANKMENTS BROKEN: MMA’s Asadullah Bhutto accusing the government of failing to perform its duties said embankments were broken in Sindh to save the lands of big landlords at the cost of those of the poor and called for a special grant for the improvement of Karachi’s sewerage system.
PPP’s Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho complained of an ‘abysmal lack of sympathy’ for the flood sufferers in Sindh after the government was ‘found napping’ despite prior warnings of the changing weather patterns, called for adequate health and other aid and also seconded the MMA member’s allegation of damage suffered by the poor people when embankments were broken to save the lands of government favourites.
Her party colleague Ms Naheed Khan accused the government of discriminating against PPP sympathisers in parts of Balochistan such as Nasirabad district and in Sindh for refusing what she called the government’s condition to change political loyalties so they could get relief.
Two MMA members from the NWFP, Maulana Ali Akbar Chitrali and Fiazur Rehman, accused the federal government of not doing enough in their province and demanded that development funds of opposition members blocked for two fiscal years should be restored at least in earthquake-hit and flood-hit areas if not for the rest of the country.