ISLAMABAD, Sept 17: The National Assembly speaker, Chaudhry Amir Hussain, on Friday warned Minister of State for Interior Dr Shahzad Waseem to restrict himself to answering questions.
The speaker asked the minister of state to answer the question and not determine its admissibility when the chair had allowed a question. The speaker's reprimand to Dr Waseem followed the comments of the minister of state when instead of answering a question, he said the question by an MNA was not relevant.
Enraged by Dr Waseem's remark which tantamount to encroachment on speaker's privilege, Chaudhry Amir Hussain said Dr Waseem was not the one to say if the question was relevant or not.
On another occasion when the minister of state tried to be sarcastically smart in response to a question by MNA Hanif Abbasi, the speaker again checked the minister of state and said instead of being happy he should be sad over the situation.
When MNA Hanif Abbasi had asked the minister about contaminated water supply to the twin cities, Dr Waseem had just started off by saying that he was happy that the MNA had got accustomed to the comparatively better water quality in Islamabad.
Dr Waseem rejected the allegations that arsenic contents in the twin cities water supply was above the permissible limits. To overcome the water shortage in the twin cities, the state minister said feasibility study for construction of six small dams had been completed.
In response to a question by MNA Zamurad Khan, he said work on the construction of Shahdara Dam had already started while there were jurisdictional problems with the construction of other dams.
He said the dams proposed to be built in the catchment areas of Islamabad were not in its territorial jurisdiction and efforts were being made to sort the issue. Earlier, when the question hour started, the federal minister for parliamentary affairs, Dr Sher Afgan, apologized to the speaker for the absence of ministers in the House.
Dr Afgan assured the speaker that he would ensure the presence of the ministers and sought an excuse on the grounds that some of them were present in the Senate. Challenging the claim of Dr Afgan, MNA Khursheed Shah said asimilar situation existed in the Senate as well where the ministers were not present.