The first phase of passing the Punjab budget was completed on Thursday as 47 demand for grants worth of 1.84 trillion was passed in Punjab Assembly while rejecting the cut motions moved by the opposition benches. The House proceedings started with the delay of more than an hour with Speaker Chaudhary Pervez Elahi in the chair on Thursday. The opposition lawmakers moved cut motions on education, health and police departments while criticizing the treasury benches over either curtailing or non-provision of sufficient funds to different sectors.
Speaking on the cut motion of health, PMLN’s former health minister Khawaja Salman Rafique said that the government decreased the budget of health department by 18 billion. He was of the view that no funds were allocated in the budget for those schemes launched by the previous regime of PML-N. Two years have passed but no sufficient funds were given to a hospital located in Rawalpindi while Gujranwala Medical College also couldn’t get funds, he said. “The present government made promise to give 100 million for a scheme of Children Hospital that was actually worth of giving 370 million but even then no funds were given to it,” said PML-N lawmaker.
Speaking on the cut motion of police department, PPP’s parliamentary leader Syed Hassan Murtaza said that the law and order situation turns worst when people are deprived of their basic rights. Giving benefit to others by usurping our rights creates hate, MPA Murtaza maintained. The budget allocated for police department should have been spent on education and health, the PPP lawmaker said. He further added that the world is eliminating the jails but we are establishing them. A minister could not do corruption without the consent of the secretary so how many secretaries had been brought to book, he asked. During his fiery speech, the treasury created pandemonium to which MPA Murtaza termed the House as a poultry farm.
Responding to cut motion of health, Dr Yasmin Rashid came down hard over the past PMLN’s regime asking what the PMLN had done in its tenure. It is only the PTI-led government that made recruitments on 28000 vacant posts and conducted 4,500,00 Corona tests in Punjab, she said. Minister for School Education Murad Ras declared PMLN’s Danish School as a source of looting or minting money in the name of education. He said they are going to establish 100 new primary schools in Lahore as the PMLN established last primary school in 2015. It is PTI’s government that upgraded 1227 schools across the province.
Law Minister Raja Basharat gilled the opposition’s lawmaker over his speech on police department. He said the House started at 2pm but the police officials are rendering their duties from 12pm in a hot weather but no one from the opposition benches visited them to serve any glass of water. Before lashing out at the department, the opposition should think for a while about those who are fighting against COVID 19 in first layer. No funds were given to police in PMLN’s previous tenure but it is PTI that gave them funds, police stations were renovated and 5000 new recruitments were made, he said.
The session was later adjourned to meet again on Friday afternoon.