Daily Times

LAHORE: Provincial Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Public Health Engineering Department Syed Haroon Sultan Bukhari has said that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led provincial government has failed to deliver as southern areas of the province are still deprived of facilities owing to lack of funds.

The statement was made by the minister while answering queries put up by the opposition benches during the Punjab Assembly session on Monday.

The Punjab Assembly proceedings started 45 minutes late to its scheduled time at 2pm with Speaker Rana Iqbal in the chair. However, the session was adjourned for 10 minutes due to the absence of the housing minister.

Later, the session resumed and Haroon Bukhari informed the House that he was stuck in massive traffic for more than one and a half an hour and got late.

Anyhow, he was not confident while answering queries, especially those put up by the opposition members. Also he made apologies time and again for wrong replies given by his department. He also tried to give some detailed answers to supplementary questions, which could not satisfy the opposition and they termed the answers irrelevant.

On this, the minister flew into rage and in a counter attack on the opposition leader and other legislators said that the House had lost its credibility. “Previously, only relevant questions were used to ask by the opposition, but now irrelevant and weird question are being put up.”

When a female legislator of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) asked as to why the Punjab government had granted permission for holding wedding ceremonies in public parks, the minister instead of answering the question took a jibe at PTI Chairman Imran Khan, saying: “I give permission to all legislators for second and third marriages.”

The PTI members criticised the statement of the housing minister and said that Imran Khan’s marriage was according to Islamic principles. Seeing the situation, the chair turned off speakers.

Earlier, Dr Waseem of Bahawalpur district raised the issue of lack of development work and delay in uplift projects in his area on which Housing Minister Haroon Bukhari said that he accepted his failure as he could not start or complete development projects in the area despite his all efforts.

He added southern areas of the province were deprived of facilities despite allocation of development funds in the areas from the chief minister. Later, opposition member Nabila Hakim Ali pointed out the quorum and the speaker adjourned the session till today (Tuesday).

Published in Daily Times, February 20^th 2018.