Opposition leader asks Sindh govt when it will buy buses for Karachi

Sindh Assembly opposition leader Haleem Adil Shaikh asked the provincial government on Monday to inform the legislature when it was going to fulfil its long-unfulfilled promise of bringing buses for launching a viable public transport system for Karachi.

Speaking on a point of order during the session, Sheikh, who belongs to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), raised the issue of the consistent failure of the Sindh government to bring buses to the city.

He asked the government to inform the concerned members of the house when it was going to complete the Orange Line section of the Bus Rapid Transit Service in Karachi. He said that earlier the chief minister and the transport minister had promised several times to bring public buses to Karachi and other cities of the province, but those promises had remained unfulfilled.

The opposition leader thanked Prime Minister Imran Khan for fulfilling his commitment to bring buses for the Green Line section of BRTS soon to be launched as the first-ever mass transit service in the city.

Responding to the point of order, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukesh Kumar Chawla told the house that the government would buy 50 buses for Karachi by January next year. He said the PTI ruling in the Centre could not name a single major development project which stood completed after having been initiated by the federal government on its own.

He said the PTI had been in the habit of celebrating the completion of development projects which had been initiated by past governments, but even then the PTI’s leadership termed the previous governments corrupt.

Chawla claimed that the BRTS Peshawar completed by the PTI’s provincial government happened to be the most expensive project of the country. He said that contrary to the claims of the PTI that 80 buses had reached Karachi, only 40 buses had arrived at the Karachi port for the BRTS Green Line section.

Meanwhile, Speaker Agha Siraj Khan Durrani termed out of order an adjournment motion moved by the lone legislator of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal in the house, Syed Abdul Rasheed, on the issue of the undue delay in holding local government elections in Sindh. The parliamentary affairs minister said the house could not discuss the issue of local government elections in the province as the issue was sub judice.

He, however, admitted that the it was an important issue, saying the delay in holding the local government elections was due to controversial results of the sixth population census, and the provincial government would readily hold the municipal polls if a fresh census drive was conducted.

Meanwhile, the house unanimously passed a resolution presented by a lawmaker of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, Mufti Qasim Fakhri, urging implementation of a resolution passed by the legislature last year that called for writing “Khatamun Nabiyyeen” wherever the name of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was mentioned in official documents and textbooks.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, informed the house that 1.8 million doses of serum were present in government-run hospitals and other public health facilities in Sindh to treat cases of snake bites.

He said the anti-snake venom serum was present in the government-run hospitals in areas as far away as Badin and Tharparkar. She was responding to a call-attention notice by PTI opposition legislator Dr Imran Ali Shah on the issue of the unavailability of the anti-snake venom serum in Sindh.