Local govt amendment bill passed amid protest

The provincial legislature considered and passed the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2017 through a majority vote on Monday.

The amendment bill was aimed at protecting elected office-bearers of the local bodies by scrapping the provision contained in the original Sindh Local Government Act 2013 to move a no-confidence motion against the chairmen and vice-chairmen of union councils and union committees.

LG Minister Jam Khan Shoro said the chairmen and vice-chairmen were directly elected through the votes of the people and not indirectly by members of the union councils or union committees, so there was no cause to move a no-confidence motion against them.

Later, when the sitting was adjourned until Tuesday, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) announced moving the court against the newly adopted LG bill.

Sindh Assembly opposition leader Khawaja Izharul Hassan told the media that the house was assembled to pass a “dictatorial” amendment bill. “We shall write to the governor to request him not to approve the bill.”

 

Sehwan shrine blast

Pandemonium was witnessed in the legislature as the opposition lawmakers protested that they were denied opportunity by the speaker to talk on the Sehwan shrine bomb blast after the chief minister’s policy statement on the incident.

Speaker Agha Siraj Khan Durrani said he would allow the opposition lawmakers to talk on the issue after going through the published agenda of the sitting.

The uproar compelled the speaker to adjourn the sitting for five minutes, but the protest could not be quelled even after the proceedings resumed.

The speaker hurriedly rushed through the agenda by completing the question hour on the Zakat & Ushr Department and later allowed tabling and consideration of a government bill.

The opposition lawmakers raised slogans against the Pakistan Peoples Party-backed Sindh government while they surrounded the speaker’s rostrum.

After completing the agenda of the day, however, Durrani allowed the opposition lawmakers to speak in the house on the Sehwan Sharif tragedy.

The opposition lawmakers criticised the provincial government by saying that no sufficient security measures were adopted at the shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar despite security threats.

The MPAs said that if such a tragedy had occurred in a civilised society, the authorities would have resigned on their own. They called for fixing responsibility on the officials who had made insufficient security arrangements at the shrine.

They said the CM and his aides should have stayed in the house for a proper debate on the incident and informed the legislature about the security arrangements made at the shrine after the bomb blast.

Parliamentary leader in the house Syed Sardar Ahmed of the MQM-P said special focus should have been given to the security of the shrine after the blast at Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine in Karachi.

He said Sehwan Sharif should have been developed to make it one of the best towns of the province, but since the independence no efforts had been made in that direction.

Dr Seema Zia of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf said Sehwan could boast of no major public hospital with sufficient facilities for treating trauma patients. She claimed that the police force of the province did not have proper uniforms, shoes or gadgets to carry out their duties, while there was not even a hospital to treat police officials.

MQM-P’s Heer Soho called for launching a Rangers-led operation in the entire province. She deplored that donkey carts were used to take the injured of the Sehwan blast to the hospitals. She lamented that the CM had been unable to set up a major public hospital in his home constituency.