KARACHI-Sindh Assembly on Monday witnessed exchange of heated arguments between treasury and opposition lawmakers as the latter accused the provincial government of using all machinery to influence the recently concluded local bodies elections.
It all started when Energy Minster Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh at the start of question hour congratulated the Pakistan People’s Party leadership and workers over their clean sweep victory in the local bodies elections in the province.
“The victory is tantamount to people confident in the PPP who voted for the party in every election,” Shaikh said— whose remarks did not appease the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s Syed Abdul Rasheed.
The minister said the opposition parties cannot compete the ‘services’ being tendered by the PPP’s government with their ‘hooliganism’
PTI Parliamentary Leader Khurram Sher Zaman hit back at the energy minister and said that the PPP had ‘offered’ sacks of money to buy conscience of local bodies representatives of other parties.
“Yet they (PPP) will be unable to get its mayor elected in Karachi. It would be the PTI whose votes will decide the fate of Mayor Karachi slot,” he added.
Acting Speaker Rehana Leghari asked the PTI parliamentary leader to stick to the questions related to the energy department.
Two million houses for flood victims
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukesh Kumar said that the provincial government was going to built two million houses for flood victims in next three months. Responding to a call attention notice moved by Nand Kumar Goklani of the Grand Democratic Alliance, Chawla said that the survey in this regard had already been conducted. “The provincial government has provided a lot of support to flood affectees,” he added.
Nand Kumar in his call attention notice asked that how many houses were built as announced earlier by Sindh government for the flood affectees.
Iron theft from infrastructure
Separately, Ali Khurshidi of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan in his call attention notice raised the issue relating to theft of iron from brides, underpasses green belts and other infrastructure in different parts of Karachi.
Khurshidi said that mainly drug addicts were involved in the crime who used to sell the iron to scrap shopkeepers.
Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government Saleem Baloch, while responding to the attention notice, termed it a big issue of the city and said that the same sort of complaints were being received to them.
Baloch said that Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s department took action against such offenders.
200,000 houses solarised
Earlier during the Question Hour, Energy Minister Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh while responding to written and verbal queries said that the department was providing solar electricity to at least 200,000 houses under Sindh Solar Electricity Project.
He said that estimated cost of a basic solar home system consisting three lights, a fan and a mobile charging socket was around Rs40,000.
Shaikh said that the price of solar panels and other equipment had increased due to the hike in the US dollar and the provincial government decided to increase the subsidy on it.
In response to a question, Shaikh said that they will also solarise all the governmental buildings in the province.
Later, the house was adjourned until today (May 9).