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Thursday March 28, 2024

Colonies Dept fails to answer PA questions in four years

By our correspondents
October 20, 2017

LAHORE :Questions put up by the Punjab Assembly to the Department of Colonies since 2013 are still unanswered as the department officials continue to ignore the queries. 

Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal expressed displeasure at the apathetic attitude of the Punjab government Colonies Department after the opposition members complained during the Q&A session that only two out of 22 marked questions regarding the department were answered. 

The assembly session started late on Thursday once again with low attendance. As the question and answer session started, the opposition members raised the issue that the department did not bother even to answer the questions put up by parliamentarians. The Colonies Department did not answer 20 out of the 22 marked questions, while out of the 15 unmarked questions nine were unanswered. The question sessions started with the question put up by Dr Waseem Akhtar in 2013 regarding the illegal transfer and occupation of the Urban Transport Depot Garden Town which has not yet been answered. Dr Waseem Akhtar had inquired that under what law the legally owned land of a private party was transferred without legal cancellation of ownership. He had also asked the reason for discontinuation of construction work at the sight.

However, the department had not bothered to answer the question which infuriated Dr Waseem who lambasted the department and termed it a mockery of the parliament. He protested this attitude and asked the speaker to take strict notice of this and proceed against those responsible for this dereliction.

Leader of the Opposition, Mian Mahmudur Rasheed, said this is a mockery of the august house of people’s representatives that the department does not even bother to answer the queries put up regarding its affairs. He said the power vested in the parliament by the people as an oversight body is being ridiculed.  The speaker asked the Parliamentary Secretary, Ch Zahid Akram, to respond. Ch Zahid said that it is not that the department did not answer the questions, but the answers were not satisfactory which is why they were sent back for reconsideration for comprehensive answers.

The speaker ordered the officials concerned to appear before him on Friday with the answers. PTI MPA Arif Abbasi, however, disputed this action of the speaker and said merely asking them to appear would not be enough and these officials should be punished.  The session on Thursday was adjourned till Friday (today) at 1:19 pm, after the quorum was pointed out.