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Thursday March 28, 2024

Speaker forced to prorogue PA session amid MQM lawmakers’ protest

By our correspondents
May 04, 2016

Karachi

The provincial assembly’s session on Tuesday ended up being prorogued owing to a protest of opposition lawmakers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) after they were ‘denied’ the permission to raise the party’s concerns on a point of order during the session.

Holding regular sessions since March 21, 2016, Tuesday’s session was particularly important as the house had completed 100 sessions of the ongoing parliamentary year 2015-16, as per the constitution as well as the provincial assembly’s rules of procedure.

Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani greeting legislators on achieving the 100-day mark went as far as to claim that the assembly was the only provincial house to complete the legislation work in time, and that it should keep up the ‘tradition’. However, following the routine recitation of the Holy Quran and Naat, the house went up in roars after MQM’s lawmaker Muhammad Hussain Khan was asked to voice the party’s issues after the question-answer session for the day.

The speaker’s decision was all but welcomed by the party as its remaining legislators also stood up from their seats in protest.

Disregarding the ruckus, the speaker commenced the question hour pertaining to queries related to the food and labour departments and asked MQM’s Dilawar Qureshi to read up his question - the first query to be registered in accordance with the day’s question order. The lawmaker instead of raising his query was quick to raise the issue of arrests, abduction and extra-judicial killings of its workers by law enforcers from both Karachi and Hyderabad, and that several missing workers of the party were yet to be located.

Meanwhile, all the speaker could do was to keep reminding the lawmaker that he had deviated from the assembly’s agenda. The reminder, however, did not bode well with the MQM lawmakers as they gathered around the speaker’s rostrum, shouting slogans against the provincial government.

Owing to the hullabaloo the assembly could only take up two questions put forward by Pakistan Muslim League – Functional’s (PML-F) Nusrat Sehar Abbasi, pertaining to the number of industrial disputes addressed by the government during 2008-13 and the number of new trade unions registered by it.

The concerned minister answering the queries claimed the Sindh government’s directorate of labour had managed to solve 167 disputes, whereas 432 new trade unions were registered by it during the mentioned time frame.

While the MQM protested, the house also managed to approve leave applications of lawmakers Sharjeel Inam Memon and Syed Owais Muzaffar, of the ruling government.

The applications were only tendered after the speaker had a day earlier warned of being compelled to take a strict action against the ministers since they had not been attending assembly sessions for at least a year now. The speaker after approving the leave applications prorogued the session for the day.

MQM media talk

Addressing media personnel following the session, leader opposition in the house MQM’s Khawaja Izharul Hassan said that although Sindh Assembly had completed 100 days of being in session but the people of Sindh did not receive any benefit during the 100 days.

Using the figure of ‘100’ metaphorically in every sentence in a bid to speak of the government’s incompetency, Hasan observed that democracy was yet to be dispensed to lower tiers despite the completion of 100 days, adding, that during these days at least ‘Rs100 billion’ meant for the province had been misappropriated, over 100 suo-moto proceedings of the court were initiated, 100 corruption cases were instituted,  in 100 instances lawmakers and provincial ministers managed to acquire pre-arrest bails, while over 100 children died due to food and health emergency in Thar; some 100 children were sold by their parents for money; 100 people went missing in Karachi; while labourers were not paid for their work of 100 days.

He said that in these 100 days the provincial government could not take anything to its credit, adding, that he saw no point in the government’s jubilation over completion of the parliamentary year. 

Referring to the ‘custodial killing’ of MQM’s senior deputy convener Dr Farooq Sattar’s coordinator, Aftab Ahmed, the leader opposition demanded to fix the responsibility of custodial killings on law enforcers; a proper medical board to determine the cause of Ahmed’s death was also demanded to be constituted.  

He said that Sindh Senior Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro had been helpless as he could not provide any information or updates regarding missing workers of Muttahida.