Karachi: The Sindh Assembly unanimously passed a resolution on Friday condemning the federal energy authorities for subjecting the people of the province to power outages of up to 20 hours daily, describing it as a discriminatory attitude on the part of the Centre.
Parliamentary affairs minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro moved and read out the resolution.
The lawmakers of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party and the opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional, and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf were all its co-signatories.
The resolution was adopted in amid the fourth consecutive day of the general discussion in the House on the provincial budget for the next financial year.
The assembly reassembled on Friday to continue the general debate on budget a day after the House had witnessed unruly scenes when the lawmakers of the ruling PPP and the opposition MQM became embroiled in a scuffle accusing each other’s leadership of involvement in corruption.
On Friday, the lawmakers regretted what happened a day earlier and expressed their resolve to show more maturity and seriousness in their debates in the House. They also vowed to avoid any repetition of such violent scenes in the assembly.
Khuhro said the resolution was being presented in view of the debate held in the house the other day on the worsening power situation in the province.
He said the power crisis had affected people belonging to all walks of life in the province.
“The functioning of several institutions including those related to health and education sectors has been affected because of frequent and prolonged power cuts,” he added. “There has been no relief in terms of power supply during the holy month of Ramazan.”
The draft of the resolution read, “This Assembly vehemently condemns the venomous and discriminatory attitude of the Federal Water and Power Authorities towards the people of Sindh province. It has been experienced that there is 18 to 20 hours load shedding and on the top of that, authorities issue wrong statements, make claims and promises that there shall be no load shedding at Sehr and Iftar timings, but all in vain. The people of the province are forced to meet their domestic, business, and agriculture power needs by use of gas generators, where as the Sui Gas Company cuts off the gas pressure by announcing ban on such use. Sindh has tremendous potential of power production and is busy in exploiting all fossil and renewable sources helping to solve the national problem of power scarcity, but surprisingly the regulatory authorities are not allowing linkage to national grid. Such attitude proves that the province is facing discrimination which is nothing but detrimental to national interest and integrity.”
‘Sindh can’t be divided’: Earlier while participating in the general discussion on the budget, a lawmaker of the ruling PPP, Sardar Ali Shah, said Sindh had always remained a single unity. “We consider Urdu-speaking people as part of our Sindh but we consider Sindh as our motherland. We want to tell our brothers that mother and her affinity can never be divided,” he remarked.
He said there was no sense of deprivation among the Urdu-speaking community.
“It is not a matter of deprivation, rather a matter of planning. Our Urdu-speaking brothers should start loving Sindh and see that they will become sons of the soil,” said the PPP MPA.
The lawmaker was speaking in the context of the demand for creating new provinces in the country which was raised in the House on Tuesday.
Syed Sardar Ahmed, the parliamentary leader of MQM, had said some people unnecessarily became infuriated on the call for creating new provinces for fulfilling the administrative and legal requirements of governance.
PPP lawmaker Sardar Ali Shah said the main reason the development funds allocated in the provincial budget of the outgoing financial year could not be spent was the reckless and unchecked interference of the federal agencies including NAB, the FIA, and Rangers in the affairs of provincial institutions.
He said federal agencies had no regard at all of the sanctity of provincial institutions. He said that an attempt was under way to damage to the federation of Pakistan by maintaining such uncalled for attitude with its federating units.
“Sindh is the founder of Pakistan. In case the constitution of Pakistan is not acted on, then the country would disintegrate,” he added.
PML-F MPA Muhammad Rashid Shah Rashdi said the demand for creating a new province in Sindh was made on the basis of the persisting sense of deprivation among population of urban parts of the province.
He said the Urdu-speaking people were compelled to call for creating a new province because of the sense of deprivation prevailing among them.
He said the provincial government should stop discriminating against the residents of the urban parts of Sindh “The moment it stops that, the demand for creating a new province would end.”
The PML-F lawmaker also called for establishing dry ports in the province especially in his native district Khairpur, which was famous for its production of dates.
Abdul Rauf Siddiqui, an MQM lawmaker, demanded declaring an education emergency in the province for fighting illiteracy as the province could not progress with so many people and children remaining uneducated.http://www.thenews.com.pk/print/128671-Sindh-slams-Centre-for-power-outages
Comments are closed.