Punjab PA passes demands for Rs1.84 trillion grants

LAHORE: The first phase of passing the Punjab budget was completed on Thursday as 47 demands for grants worth Rs1.84 trillion were passed in the Punjab Assembly while rejecting cut motions moved by the opposition benches.

The House proceedings started with a delay of more than an hour with Speaker Chaudhry Pervez Elahi in the chair. The opposition lawmakers moved cut motions on education, health and police departments while criticizing the treasury benches over either curtailing or non-provision of sufficient funds to different sectors. Responding to the cut motion of health, Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid came down hard over the past PML-N regime asking what it had done in its tenure. “It is only the PTI-led government that made recruitments to 28,000 vacant posts and conducted 4,500,00 corona tests in Punjab,” she said. Minister for School Education Murad Ras declared PML-N’s Danish School a source of looting or minting money in the name of education. He said they were going to establish 100 new primary schools in Lahore as the PML-N established last primary school in 2015. It is PTI’s government that upgraded 1,227 schools across the province, he added.

Law Minister Raja Basharat grilled an opposition lawmaker over his speech on the police department. He said the House started at 2pm but the police officials were rendering their duties from 12pm in hot weather but no one from the opposition benches visited them to serve water. Before lashing out at the department, the opposition should think for a while about those who are fighting against Covid-19 in first layer. No funds were given to police in PML-N’s previous tenure but it is the PTI that gave them funds, police stations were renovated and 5,000 new recruitments were made, he said.

The session was later adjourned to meet again on Friday afternoon. Speaking on the cut motion of health, PML-N’s former health minister Khawaja Salman Rafique said that the government had decreased the budget of the health department by Rs18 billion. He was of the view that no funds were allocated in the budget for schemes launched by the previous regime of PML-N. Two years have passed but no sufficient funds were given to a hospital located in Rawalpindi while Gujranwala Medical College also couldn’t get funds, he said. “The present government promised to give 100 million for a scheme of Children Hospital that was actually worth of giving Rs370 million but even then no funds were given to it,” he said.

Speaking on the cut motion of police department, PPP’s parliamentary leader Syed Hassan Murtaza said that the law and order situation had worsened when people were deprived of their basic rights. Giving benefit to others by usurping our rights creates hate, MPA Murtaza maintained. The budget allocated for police department should have been spent on education and health, the PPP lawmaker said. He further added that the world is eliminating jails but we are establishing them. A minister could not do corruption without the consent of the secretary so how many secretaries had been brought to book, he asked. During his fiery speech, the treasury created pandemonium to which MPA Murtaza termed the House a poultry farm.