Hamza dwells on federal issues during budget session.

LAHORE -- Opposition Leader Hamza Shahbaz formally opened the four-day discussion on the provincial budget at the Punjab Assembly session here on Thursday.

He focused more on the issues related to the federal issues such as prime minister's Sindh visit, coronavirus strategy, sugar and flour inquiry reports, and drug prices scandal, than the provincial budget during his speech.

Hamza said the PM should have preferred visiting victims of PIA plane crash instead of meeting ruling PTI allies in Karachi. He questioned Rs900 million expenses on setting up isolation ward for virus patients at the Johar Town Expo Centre as patients were suffering under scorching sun at various hospitals.

He chided the PM for terming the pandemic a minor flu to be cured by Panadol, ignoring repeated pleas by the medical fraternity to impose a lockdown in the country for curtailing spread of the virus and now six thousand people were getting infected daily.

The opposition leader alleged that the government was telling lies on each issue as 40 per cent of crops have been destroyed due to locust against official claims that not much damage had been caused to the agriculture culture by the menace. He chided the government for not increasing salaries of the employees.

He recalled that justice could not be provided to the victims of Sahiwal tragedy despite tall claims, while there was also no report about what happened to the sugar and flour inquiry reports.

Hamza also talked of partial accountability as the National Accountability Bureau was overlooking the Peshawar metro bus scam and the project remained incomplete despite incurring Rs110 billion expenses. He said the Supreme Court said that NAB has destroyed this country, while the so-called top corruption watchdog could not file a reference against him despite keeping him behind the bars for the last one year.

He said his party (PML-N) while in power in the centre had taken Rs10,000 billion in five years whereas the PTI government borrowed Rs10,000 billion in just one and a half years and unlike the former it could not initiate any big project with this huge borrowed money.

He recalled that the PML-N government had reserved 36 per cent share of the budget for South Punjab. He said local government elections could not be held during the last two years though the relevant law has been amended multiple times and...