MTI Reforms (Amendment) Bill passed amid walkout

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Friday passed the KP Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms (Amendment) Bill 2018 amid walkout by the opposition as a mark of protest.

The opposition insisted on sending the bill to the select committee for review. The opposition lawmakers staged walkout when the treasury benches refused to send it to the committee even though some amendments proposed by the opposition were adopted. Speaking on the bill, the opposition leader in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, Akram Khan Durrani, said senior doctors had some reservations over the amendments to the legislation.

He said it might create unrest among the doctors’ community if it was adopted in a hurry. He said that legislation should be done with consensus for bringing improvement in the health service delivery.

He asked whether the province lacked competent doctors that the provincial government was hiring doctors affiliated with the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital in Lahore.

The parliamentary leader of Awami National Party (ANP), Sardar Hussain Babak, also suggested the bill should be discussed threadbare by the select committee.

Inayatullah Khan of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) said about two dozen amendments have been introduced in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015 and this was the reason the bill should be thoroughly discussed and reviewed by the select committee to avoid repeated amendments.

He said the bill might be challenged in courts if shortcomings were not removed and the reservations of the stakeholders were not addressed. However, Minister for Health Dr Hisham Inamullah said the bill had reached the consideration stage as lawmakers had introduced their amendments in it. “Therefore, it could not be sent to the select committee,” he argued. The opposition staged walkout when Deputy Speaker Mehmood Jan, who presided over the session, ruled that the bill cannot be sent to the committee at this stage. The bill was passed with majority as only Sahibzada Sanaullah of Pakistan People’s Party said ‘No’ when other opposition members were out of the House after the walkout.

Earlier in the question hour, the House was told that Swat Expressway would be completed by May 2019.

To a question by Sardar Hussain Babak, the House was told that it was a project of Rs34.165 billion in which the government share under VGF was Rs11.5 billion, sponsor acuity Rs8.329 billion, business loan of the contractor Rs8.264 billion and provincial government loan of Rs5.5 billion. Minister for Communications and Works Akbar Ayub said the project would now be completed by May next year as due to the change in design two extra tunnels and three bridges were being constructed. The contraction firm, Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) will collect toll tax on the expressway for 25 years and would also carry out the maintenance and repair work.