The Sindh Assembly on Monday commenced a pre-budget discussion, which will continue till Friday (March 21), to let lawmakers on the treasury and opposition benches present their proposals for the provincial government budget for the new fiscal year 2025-26.
While taking part in the discussion, PPP MPA, Farooq Awan claimed that the Sindh government of the Pakistan Peoples Party had been doing its best to facilitate the lives of people of Sindh.
He informed the house that his electoral constituency was based in District Korangi in Karachi and claimed that earlier public representatives from the area didn't do anything to serve their electorates. He predicted that the newly inaugurated Malir Expressway would transform the destiny of the people of District Korangi. He demanded that the Korangi Causeway project be completed at the earliest.
Sabir Qaimkhani, a lawmaker belonging to the opposition party Muttahida Qaumi Movement, demanded that the Sindh government should constitute a provincial finance commission for equitable distribution of the fiscal resources available to the province. He asked the government to speedily resolve civic and municipal problems of the residents of Hyderabad and Lateefabad.
PPP MPA Heer Soho said that the PPP’s regime in the province had been serving the people of the province in an extraordinary way. She said the Sindh government would construct two million houses for the homeless flood victims in the province.
She told the house that 300,000 houses had already been constructed to provide proper shelter to the flood-affected families in the province. She said 540,000 bank accounts had already been opened to transfer the money to the homeless flood victims for reconstruction of their houses.
The PPP MPA urged the government to build a university in the Sujawal district. She said the PPP regime in the province would do its best to resist any move to build additional canals on the Indus River to protect farmlands in tail-end areas of the irrigation system of Sindh.
MQM MPA Quratul Ain demanded that the Sindh government should reserve funds in the provincial budget for the development schemes proposed by the opposition lawmakers. She urged the provincial authorities to adopt a firm strategy with the police to protect innocent lives of citizens in urban areas against rising incidents of armed street robberies.
PPP MPA Shazia Karim demanded that the issue of inflated electricity bills being sent to residents in Lyari should be resolved. MQM lawmaker Jamal Ahmed asked the government to resolve the acute water crisis facing District Central in Karachi. He said the residents of District Central areas had to suffer gravely during Ramazan due to the acute water shortage. He said that people didn't have the financial capacity to pay exorbitant charges for the water tanker service.
MQM MPA Moeed Anwar lamented that construction of the Red Line BRT corridor alongside University Road in Karachi had been unduly delayed. He mentioned that Sindh Transport Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon had also conceded that the construction of the Red Line bus corridor wouldn't be completed till 2026.
He said the completion of the Red Line bus corridor had become as problematic as had been the cause of the K-IV bulk water supply project for Karachi. He also narrated the acute hardships being faced by the residents of Gulshan-e-Iqbal due to a severe water shortage.
PPP MPA Jam Shabbir Ali said the construction of new canals on the Indus River would simply ruin the farming sector in Sindh. He said the agricultural sector was like lifeline for the people of the province.