Daily Times

LAHORE: Lawmakers from southern Punjab in the Punjab Assembly on Friday voiced serious concerns over non-allocation of funds for establishment of a sub-civil secretariat in Multan in order to transfer powers to southern Punjab

Talking to Daily Times, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Parliamentary Leader in the House Qazi Ahmad Saeed and other legislators including, Sardar Shahabuddin and Khawaja Muhammad Nizamul Mehmood, said that it was unfair to cancel the project.

They said that people of southern Punjab were shocked at the government’s failure to allocate funds for the much-needed project to compensate the prevailing sense of deprivation among the people of southern Punjab.

They said that the government had constituted 14 committees, which held 38 meetings in the recent past, to ponder upon proposals for establishment of the project. “Millions of rupees spent on the more than three dozens of meetings of the committees have been wasted after the cancellation of the project,” they added.

“Instead of allocating a grant for the project, the Punjab government has withdrawn Rs 2 billion development funds allocated for southern Punjab areas,” they deplored.

PPP legislator Khawaja Muhammad Nizamul Mehmood also filed a resolution in the Punjab Assembly Secretariat demanding the government to facilitate the people of southern Punjab and allocate development funds for establishment of a sub-civil secretariat in Multan.

It might be mentioned that the Punjab Assembly had already passed two resolutions for granting the status of provinces to southern Punjab and Bahawalpur district.