Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The protest of over 80 members of the National Assembly belonging to the ruling party has at last worked and two active leaders of the PML N arranged a meeting of the ministers and the angry MNAs and a clear message was delivered to the ministers to resolve the issues of the angry MNAs,sources told Daily Times.

Sources said that after the passage of the budget , senior ministers and main leaders of the angry group were invited at the Prime Minister’s House where two important leaders of the ruling party Maryam Nawaz and Hamza Shahbaz interacted with them and listened to the complaints of the angry parliamentarians.

“We are elected representatives of the masses,people come to us to resolve their problems,but when we go to meet the ministers at their offices or residences ,mostly they do not bother to meet us. We make telephone calls but they do not attend. It’s insult to us that is not acceptable at all”,one of the angry MNAs complained,the sources disclosed.

The sources also said that the leader of the group Chaudhry Jaffer Iqbal was of the view that no one was against the party leadership at all. “We were present in the National Assembly for the passage of the budget,we did not form any group but we recorded our protest in a decent way ,the parliamentarians belonging to agriculture areas wanted the farmers problems to be resolved ,the GST on agri inputs and mark up on agri loans should be reduced,we presented our demands in writing to the finance minister,requseted him for time for a meeting but we were unable to get time”, he stated.

Humza Shahbaz said that reservations of some members of the National Assembly “is our home matter. I m happy our friends adopted the democratic way. No one went public and we would honour them and resolve their issues”, the sources said.

Sources also said that Maryam Nawaz and Humza Shahbaz assured them that their reservations regarding the ministers would also be addressed .

Some directions were also passed to the ministers so in the future party does not face such a situation. “The next year is very important for us,if we do not resolve the issues of the people then the opposition parties can take advantage”, it was said.

The Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar told the participants that he was busy with the budget but now he would have time to look after the demands of the MNAs and the farmers package would be implemented soon after the president signed the finance bill.

It may be mentioned here that due to the reservations of the angry MNAs the government had to face the issue of quorum during the budget session and it was the first time in parliamentary history that the government was defeated over 12 times by the opposition on the issue of quorum.