Senate chairman takes exception to ministers’ absence

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani on Tuesday expressed anguish at absence of ministers of water and power from the House and warned to ban their entry if they stayed away in future.
During the question hour, several questions relating to the Ministry of Water and Power were left out after the House was informed that Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali had informed that he was busy in a function, hosted by the prime minister. The chair expressed displeasure saying that there were not one but two ministers for the Ministry of Water and Power but none was around. He warned of banning entry of the ministers for some sittings, if he stayed away in future.
The Senate chairman had also to briefly (for 10 minutes) suspend the House proceedings after finding out Law Minister Pervaiz Rashid was not available for five agenda items related to his ministry, as he was busy with the prime minister in connection with a ceremony in honour of Belarusian prime minister.
Meanwhile, the joint opposition stormed out of the Senate Tuesday against the reported signing of ‘non-transparent’ LNG deal for 15 years with Qatar, keeping the Parliament in the dark and discriminatory treatment meted out to a Christian student in a Faisalabad school.
The government was asked by the lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to speed up relief and rehabilitation operations in the areas, hit by recent earthquake and also increase cash help and pay in one go to the affected people.
The PML-Q Senator Kamil Ali Agha, raising a point of public importance, pointed out that the opposition had been demanding the government to explain its position on proposed LNG for a year and a half, but they had learnt through the media that a deal had been struck with Qatar with a much higher price than the petroleum minister had been talking about. The veteran legislator went on to allege that personal interests were hidden behind the non-transparent deal. “We shall stage walkout from the House in protest against this,” he asserted.
This prompted Leader of Opposition Aitzaz Ahsan to say that the walkout was also against the Faisalabad government school incident, which he termed as extremely sad and wanted registration of a case against those who beat up the Christian female student.
The PTI’s Mohsin Aziz rose to agitate that the House had held discussions on proposed LNG deal several times and talked also about the falling textile industry, which had rendered 1.5 million workers jobless, but the government had nothing to say. “Is the Senate a debating club,” he wondered.
Sherry Rehman of PPP raised the issue of denying a Christian student to use the only washroom in the school and also disallowing her to drink water. She quoted a news report that the headmistress asked the student not to drink water, which she said was meant only for Muslim students, whereas she was a ‘Kafir’. The headmistress said she also could not use the washroom, in use of Muslim students. Then she was subjected to beating and was locked in the washroom. She remained in the washroom for four hours and then some other Muslim students got her out of it.
The PPP senator regretted amid chants of shame, shame by some senators that it was a matter of shame that while the House discussed militancy and intolerance against minorities in India, such kind of treatment was meted out to a Christian student in Faisalabad.
The chair asked Leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq to share the incident-related details with the House Wednesday, who also condemned it and wanted action against the guilty individuals.
The PPP Senator Karim Khawaja drew the attention of the Senate towards a news report, which said over 50 candidates, belonging to the banned outfits had returned in the recent local bodies polls in Punjab.
About the alleged lack of relief and rehabilitation activities and insufficient cash support to the quake victims, Aitzaz Ahsan said that how would the prime minister pay attention to them when there was no Siddique Baloch there.
“Had he been there, the prime minister would have paid Rs2.5 billion, who said in Lodhran public meeting the other day, he would announce Rs2.5 billion, whereas the PML-N candidate had requested Rs2 billion funds for the constituency. I am in search of Siddique Baloch for the quake victims,” he said.
The PPP’s Taj Haider, PML-Q’s Mushahid Hussain Syed, Kamil Agha, Nauman Wazir and Mohsin Aziz of PTI, ANP’s Shahi Syed, Sherry Rehman, Farhatullah Babar of the PPP, MQM’s Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, Muhammad Ali Saif and Nasreen Jalil, Jamaat-e-Islami’s Sirajul Haq, Karim Khawaja and Javed Abbasi of the PML-N called for accelerating the pace of relief and rehabilitation activities in view of snowfall and rain in the quake-devastated areas.
They regretted that no lessons had been learnt from the 2005 natural disaster and even the NDMA and Erra could not develop standard operating procedures in case of a disaster. They noted that there was no concept of implementation of the building code, 2007.
The senators called for establishment of a full-fledged minister of disaster management with the merger of NDMA and Erra and evolving a mechanism to punish those, who violated the building code and used substandard construction material.
The senators had a discussion on a report presented by the minister incharge of the climate change in the House and the adjournment motion by Mashhadi regarding failure of the government in implementation of the Pakistan Engineering Council Building Code, 2007.
Senator Babar pointed out a serious disconnect between the government and the military with regards to the recent earthquake, as the civilian authorities were caught unaware of the disaster and ISPR informed about the earthquake.
The PML-N Senator Salahuddin Tirmizi wondered was there any use of having a discussion on the matter in the Senate, as hardly the recommendations and ideas thrashed out in the House were taken seriously and implemented. The chair referred the ministry report to the House committee on Law and Justice to see its implementation.
Through a call attention notice, Shahi Syed raised the issue of non-payment of salaries to the daily wage employees of model colleges in Islamabad for the last six months. He called for immediate payments to the teachers and other employees and regularisation of their services.
Minister of State Usman Ibrahim said that a committee was dealing with the cases of 1,129 daily wagers and after its recommendations, the fate of these persons would be decided. He added that they had moved a summary for grant of Rs140 million for this purpose.
Earlier, during the question hour, the chair wanted to know the reason of slightly higher salary of the Election Commission Member from Punjab, as compared to his colleagues from three other provinces. He asked Minister of State Shaikh Aftab Ahmad, who said this might be because of some additional allowances.
On this, the chair said that the House could not be run on supposition and asked the minister to get the related information from ECP and return to inform the House.