The opposition political parties in the Provincial Assembly of Sindh (PA) on Monday again submitted a requisition to convene a session of the House to discuss some pressing issues, including the locust emergency, and to hold a pre-budget discussion.
Earlier, on the requisition of the combined opposition, a PA session was conducted between June 3 and June 5 to hold a general discussion on the COVID-19 crisis in the province.
According to PA opposition leader Firdous Shamim Naqvi of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, sessions of the House need to be convened to fulfil the constitutional requirement of holding assembly meetings for 100 days in a parliamentary year. He said they were still short of 14 days to meet the requirement.
Naqvi said they had submitted the requisition to know about the preparations made by the Sindh Agriculture Department to tackle the locust emergency in view of the responsibilities being devolved to the provincial government following the passage of the 18th constitutional amendment.
He said that although the Sindh chief minister while summing up the general discussion in the House on the novel coronavirus situation in the province had spoken for around one and a half hours, he had not shared with them the future strategy of his government to tackle the epidemic.
The opposition leader said that there is no clarity as to whether or not another lockdown will be imposed in the province, adding that if another lockdown will be imposed, what will the nature of it be.
He suggested making use of technology in the upcoming budget session of the House, saying that majority of the legislators should attend the session through the facility of video conferencing in view of the COVID-19 crisis.
Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan parliamentary party leader Kanwar Naveed Jameel said the government should have convened a pre-budget session of the PA before presenting the provincial budget in June to invite feedback of the lawmakers concerned.
Jameel said that public representatives want to discuss the budgetary affairs of Sindh because according to him, the development works of Karachi and Hyderabad have been ignored by the provincial government.
He said that a PA session should be convened to discuss the arrangements of the Sindh government to tackle the novel coronavirus emergency in Karachi, the division of the province that has been reporting the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
He also said the Sindh government has a number of buildings at its disposal where it can make emergency arrangements to treat the people infected by the virus. The lawmaker said that not all the legislators who had been screened for the novel coronavirus before the previous PA session had gotten their results. He said that this clearly shows the seriousness of the Sindh government as regards tackling the crisis.
Age limit
Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho has written to PA Speaker Agha Siraj Khan Durrani asking him that lawmakers over the age of 55 should not be allowed to attend any session of the House.
She also mentioned the guidelines and standard operating procedures (SOPs) devised by the provincial government under the guidance of the chief minister against the spread of the novel coronavirus.
She said that there has been a phenomenal rise in COVID-19 cases in the province, adding that people of older ages and those having other underlying health problems, including diabetes, are more prone to COVID-19. She suggested that every lawmaker participating in any of the sessions of the assembly should follow all of the government’s SOPs, including the compulsory wearing of face masks.