Treasury, Opp benches trade barbs as SA budget session continues.

KARACHI -- The treasury and opposition lawmakers kept labeling allegations and counter allegations on each other as discussion on budget for fiscal year 2020-21 entertered the second day in the Sindh Assembly.

At one moment, heated words were exchanged to the extent that one of the opposition members declared that she would not let treasury members to deliver their speeches with one treasury member announcing that she would hit with stick the member who attempted to disturb her during the debate.

Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani kept on telling Grand Democratic Alliance member Nusrat Sehar Abbasi not to disturb the house, the members from both the sides continued to hurl allegations against each other's top leadership.

'Sindh government ignored education sector'

Rabia Azfar Nizami of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf took a jibe at the PPP-led Sindh government for 'ignoring' the education sector and said the 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 eight per cent.

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

Rabia said that university enrollment at Islamabad higher than total numbers of varsity's students at 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 in the budget since 2009. 'Six comprehensive schools established with Rs 14 billion have been non-functional for two years,' Rabia said. The PTI MPA was of the view that 90 per cent of 170,000 teachers in the province were arts teachers and only 10 per cent were specialists in different subjects. 'There was no scheme in the budget for uplifting efficiency of these teachers,' she said.

Speaking on child protection, Rabia said the lost and found children in the province were left on mercy of the charity organizations.

'It is responsibility of the state to look after the children. The Chief Minister should give this department to someone else as he does not have the passion to run child protection department,' the...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT