Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said on Friday that the provincial assembly and the bureaucracy in the province had been stopped from discharging their duties during the five years of his constitutional term.
During his farewell speech on the floor of the PA, Shah thanked Almighty Allah for the completion of the five-year constitutional tenure of the House. He sought forgiveness from his fellow PA members that the legislature would be dissolved a day before the completion of its five-year term.
He said that a summary would be sent later in the day to the governor for the dissolution of the PA. He added that he would personally go to the governor with the advice of dissolving the assembly for the governor to sign it.
He lamented that several Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawmakers had been arrested during the last five years. He said the PA speaker’s imprisonment was still continuing, as the speaker had to come from jail to chair the session of the House.
Shah also mentioned his government’s services during the past five years to tackle the Covid-19 and flood emergencies. He said his government had conducted a large-scale recruitment drive to hire teachers on merit to make every public school in the province functional.
He also said Thar coal’s extraction for electricity generation for the entire country and the launching of the Peoples Bus Service for the residents of the province’s urban areas were some of the important achievements of his government. Sindh has been generating 3,240 megawatts for the national grid, he added.
He thanked the prime minister for making efforts to resolve Sindh’s problems during his tenure. He also thanked all his party’s lawmakers for their complete support for running the provincial government.
‘Unjust distribution’
PA opposition leader Rana Ansar also thanked PPP lawmakers for welcoming her recent appointment as the opposition leader. She expressed gratitude to the province’s people as well for helping her make it to the House.
She mentioned that Sindh’s people from Karachi to Kashmore were displeased due to the unjust distribution of state resources. She, however, appreciated the pro-people steps of the government.
She said the issue of out-of-school children in the province is yet to be resolved. Sindh’s people are yet to become the ultimate beneficiaries of the 18th amendment and the devolution of powers to the grassroots level, she added.
She urged all the political parties to assemble on a single platform to present a Peoples Charter to resolve the basic issues of the people, including joblessness and street crime. “We will Insha Allah be elected to the assembly again and form the next government.”
Impartial elections
Labour and Human Resources Minister Saeed Ghani said that only impartial general elections can guarantee political and economic stability in the country.
He urged all political forces to join hands for working together to resolve the people’s most pressing issues. He said the political forces should take steps to ensure that the upcoming general polls are acceptable to all the stakeholders.
He also said the PA would have conducted its proceedings in a better environment if the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s Rana Ansar had been given the opportunity to become the opposition leader five years ago. He urged his fellow legislators to forgive him for any remarks that might have hurt them.
Ghani said the Sindh government’s newly launched project to build houses for two million homeless flood victims is a historical step, adding that the government would soon fulfil this gigantic task as per the PPP chief’s vision.
Before the last session of the assembly was prorogued, the House unanimously adopted a resolution to pay tribute to PA Speaker Agha Siraj Khan Durrani for his parliamentary services as the custodian of the legislature for the past decade. The resolution was presented by the Grand Democratic Alliance’s MPA Arif Mustafa Jatoi.
