Barred from criticising Khawaja Asif, MQM walks out of PA

Karachi
As discussion over the annual budget continued in the Sindh Assembly for the third consecutive day on Thursday, opposition lawmakers of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) staged a walkout from the House, for a brief period of time, because their resolution against the “derogatory” statement of federal defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif was not allowed.
Muhammad Hussain of the MQM, after being refused a day before on Wednesday by the Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani, again sought permission from the chair to table his resolution in condemnation of the defence minister’s statement which he said was derogatory for the country’s “Mohajir” community.
The Speaker denied the request again with the same reason that no business other than the annual budget could be discussed in the House.
When the MQM legislator gave arguments in favour of his resolution, the speaker reprimanded him with the remarks that he could use his discretionary powers to not allow the resolution to be tabled.
On this the MQM lawmakers, who were already wearing armbands to symbolise their protest against the annual budget which they describe unfair for the urban areas, staged a walkout from the House while chanting slogans in favour of the Mohajir community and their party leader Altaf Hussain.
However, after a gap of about ten minutes, senior education minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, who is also the parliamentary leader of the Pakistan People’s Party in the House, and provincial parliamentary affairs minister Dr Sikandar Ali Mandhro, were able to persuade the protesting lawmakers to return to the session and continue with the discussion on annual budget presented last Saturday by the provincial government.
Later, while speaking on the budget, MQM lawmakers including Muhammad Abdul Rauf Siddiqui, Aisha Khatoon and Naila Munir, also used their time to vehemently condemn the remarks of defence minister, describing it to be highly unbecoming for millions of people belonging to the Muhajir community whose forefathers had fought had and sacrificed their lives for the creation of Pakistan.
After the session was adjourned, leader of opposition Khwaja Izhar-ul-Hassan of the MQM while talking to the media outside the Sindh Assembly, said a full-fledged protest drive would be launched across the province in case the ruling party tried to get the budget passed from the assembly in its present “unjust” state.
He said passage of the provincial budget in its present form would be a dictatorial and undemocratic act on part of the PPP and urged the chief and finance ministers to pay heed to the suggestions of MQM and incorporate them into the document.
He said MQM lawmakers would continue to wear black armbands in the House in the coming days as well till the Sindh government assured them of making changes to the unfair budget.

70bn shortfall
Meanwhile, finance minister Syed Murad Ali Shah informed the House that Sindh faced a shortfall of its share worth Rs70 billion expected to be received from the federal government during the current financial year 2014-15.
He said the province till June 3 had only received Rs16 billion while it had still to get its share of Rs54 billion and he had written to the federal finance minister to intimate him of the matter.
According to the finance minister, Sindh had met all its targets pertaining to tax collection during the current financial year the federal board of revenue had failed to meet the same targets in the corresponding period. He said Sindh should not be punished because the federal agency concerned had failed to collect all the revenues in time.

‘Unfair’ budget
The opposition lawmakers continued with their barrage of criticism on the annual budget for the third consecutive day and with also flayed the Sindh government which is about to complete seven years under the PPP.
Muhammad Moin Aamir Pirzada of the MQM said the new Annual Development Programme (ADP) of Sindh government includes a project worth Rs2.5 billion for fortification of the embankments of Malir River in Karachi, which he said was of no use at all for public service.
According to him, the actual purpose of the scheme was to reclaim land from the bed of Malir River for illegal allotment for residential purposes. He said if the land was reclaimed illegally and sold then there would be insufficient space for the natural storm water stream which could lead to flooding in adjacent areas in the monsoon season.
Another opposition MPA, Dr Muhammad Rafique Bhanban of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) said Sindh had seen no improvement in any of its vital sectors during the time PPP had led the provincial government.
Waryam Faqeer of the PML-F said the coordinator chief minister’s inspection team had himself admitted that the Sindh government was replete with corruption.
Naheed Begum of the MQM called on the Sindh government to provide subsidy on wheat flour, like the Punjab government.
She lamented that Karachi University in the past financial year hadn’t received any financial support from the Sindh government when it could release Rs200 million for the newly-built varsity in Lyari.
Poonjo Bheel, a minority lawmaker from the MQM, said the government’s plans to establish reverse osmosis water filtration plants in Thar desert had failed because people there still faced acute scarcity of water.
He said the provincial government claimed to spend millions of rupees on public health in Thar but despite that around 980 children had died due to health-related issues.
He said virtual shops were working in the Sindh Secretariat where people were blatantly selling government jobs.
A lawmaker of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Syed Aijaz Shah Sheerazi, said not a single penny had been allocated during the past three years for development schemes proposed by opposition MPAs of the Thatta district. He said that around 100,000 acres of forest land in Thatta had been allotted to the company owned by an influential person who was close to high officials inside the Sindh government.