Ruckus in PA after opposition lawmaker’s budget speech cut short

The opposition legislators in the Sindh Assembly resorted to a vociferous protest in the House on Monday as a lawmaker on the opposition benches was not allowed to complete her speech on the recently presented budget of the provincial government.

The House witnessed a serious commotion as MPA Nusrat Sehar Abbasi of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), known for her fiery speeches in the provincial legislature, was not granted the opportunity by PA Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani to complete her speech on the provincial budget.

Monday was the third day of the general discussion in the House on the Sindh government’s budget for the upcoming financial year 2021-22 that was recently presented in the assembly. Before the speech of the legislator was cut short in the House, the speaker had warned her that she should not name in the assembly the leadership of the opponent political party in order to unduly criticise them.

Opposition lawmakers surrounded the rostrum of the speaker to register their protest in the House but the GDA legislator was not granted an opportunity by the chair to complete her speech on the budget.

During her fiery remarks in the House earlier, the MPA Nusrat had said that the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) took no cognisance of the recurring instances of abuse being committed across the province against female members of society, as even girl students in schools had to face a similarly dreadful situation, but PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari looked the other way. She said the Sindh Public Service Commission had also been involved in unmeritorious appointments against vacancies in the provincial government’s service. She also claimed that corrupt practices had become rife at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases.

The lawmaker said farmers and teachers in Sindh protesting for their rightful demands are often baton-charged. She said that the national language is used in every province to deliver the budget speech, but Sindh’s chief minister chose to deliver his budget speech in English to please his “anonymous benefactors”.

The speaker later remarked that the conduct of some of the members of the House was highly unbecoming of an MPA, as they should better become a part of a circus. MPA Adeeba Hassan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) said in her speech that every reverse-osmosis water filtration plant in Sindh had the inauguration plaque carrying the name of the late prime minister Benazir Bhutto, but unfortunately, none of the plants was functional.

She said the Sindh government accorded the least bit of focus on the genuine issues of the people of the province, which was why their problems remained unresolved.