Daily Times

1-National-Assembly-of-PakistanAmid strong protest by opposition, the National Assembly (NA) on Monday passed three bills, while four other bills and ordinances tabled for legislation.

The NA session started as per scheduled with speaker Asad Qaiser in chair. As proceedings resumed after the question hour, the speaker announced for debate on the bills. The opposition lawmakers started to protest against the bills.

The passed bills by the lower house included “the China Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority Bill, 2020”, “The Public Private Partnership Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2020” and “The Pakistan Single Window Bill, 2020”. The national Metrology Institute of Pakistan Bill, 2021, and the Pakistan Ordnance Factories Board (Amendment) Bill, 20201 were also accepted for legislation by the house.

Besides, the “Federal Medical Teaching Institutes, Ordinances, 2020” and the “Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Ordinance, 2020” were laid before the House for legislation in the future.

As the speaker started reading bills, the opposition members started thumbing desks while standing on their seats. However, the speaker continued the proceeding without bothering the interruption they made. When opposition lawmakers made out that their rumpus was unable to stop speaker and treasury benches from proceeding, they left their seats and gathered around the speaker’s roaster. The rumpus increased as much as the voice of proceeding was not easily hearable from the press gallery. The opposition members tore up all bills and chanted slogans ‘Jago jago speaker jago’, ‘Give relief to public’, ‘Speaker ko reha karo’, ‘Galli galli main shor hy, speaker saada kamzor hai’. They remained gathered around the roster while Speaker Qaiser continued announcement of the bills that all were tabled from treasure benches. He passed the bills with a majority vote. The speaker seemed in little hurry as he wrapped up all bills within half an hour. Even he was least concerned to look at the legislators who were making rackets while around his roaster.

The anxiety of the opposition was unknown. However, during protest they said that the government should give relief to the public from rapid hikes in inflation and unemployment. They also took the issue of the increase in petrol and electricity prices in the spotlight.

It is pertinent to be mentioned that in the previous session some bills were tabled for legislation but except a few of them almost all have been rejected these terms are not maintainable. While highlighting the Pakistan Single Window Bill, 2020, Aliya Hamza Malik said that the purpose of the bill was to ensure the unhindered right to lawful trade as enshrined in article 18 of the constitution of Pakistan, adding that an autonomous body be established to simplify cross border trade processes reduce cost of doing business and facilities trade on national and international level.

Earlier in the question hour, to reply to a question by Riaz Ul Haq of PML-N, Aliya Hamza Malik said on behalf of the commerce minister that Pakistan and the Middle east share deep rooted and historical ties, adding that Arab countries have remained a major market for Pakistani exports. “It has upgraded the post of commercial secretary (BPS-18) to minister (trade and investment BPS-20) Riyadh and notified him as cluster head for the Middle East region,” she said. Aliya Malik emphasized that this will help in expanding bilateral commercial relations between Pakistan and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To another question by Shazia Marri of PPP, Aliya Malik explained that State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has been cognizant of trends of online banking frauds and has over this year, taken a number of steps to curb this menace such as the SBP issues regulations on payment of card security vide circular, in terms of which it was mandatory for banks to start euro pay master visa complaint based cards (Chip Based Cards).