Govt, opposition trade barbs in PA as budget debate continues.

KARACHI -- The second day of the ongoing debate on the provincial budget 2020-21 in the Sindh Assembly session on Monday was marred by allegations and counter-allegations by the treasury and opposition members who exchanged heated words and hurled accusations at each other`s top leadership.

One of the opposition members declared that she would not let treasury members deliver their speeches with one treasury member announcing that she would hit with stick the member who attempted to disturb her during the debate.

While Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani kept on telling Grand Democratic Alliance mem-ber Nusrat Sehar Abbasi not to disturb the house, the members from both sides of the aisle continued to hurl allegations against each other`s top leadership.

At one stage around an hour before the session was adjourned to Tuesday (today) by the speaker, there were only three opposition members and 10 treasury members present in the house.

PPP slammed for `ignoring` education Rabia Azfar Nizami of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf took a jibe at the Pakistan Peoples Party-led Sindh government for `ignoring` the education sector and said education was not the provincial government`s priority.

She said that 90 per cent allocated amount for education department was spent on non-development expenditures whereas the development projects got only 8pc.

The PTI MPA said that 6.2 million children were out of school in the province and only 2.5m were enrolled in primary sections. She added that enrolment at secondary level was just around 380,000, whereasthe number of students at college level was just around 129,000.

Ms Nizami said that university enrolment in Islamabad was higher than total number of varsity students in entire Sindh, adding that 550,000 students were enrolled in the capital, whereas only 174,000 were registered in the province.

She said that there were 265 existing schemes for education department in the budget but most of them were incorporated inthebudgetsince2009.

`Six comprehensive schools established with Rs14 billion have been non-functional for two years,` she said.

The PTI MPA was of the view that 90pc of 170,000 teachers in the province were arts teachers and only 10pc were specialists in dif ferent subjects. `There was no scheme in the budget for uplif ting efficiency of these teachers,` she said. Speaking on child protection, Ms Nizami said the `lost-and-found` children in the province were left at the mercy of charity organisations.

`It is...