After the ruling of Chairman Senate, now parliamentary panel of the Senate has urged the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to convene Council of Common Interests (CCI) as per constitutional requirement. A meeting of the Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee (IPCC) was convened by Mir Kabir Ahmed Muhammad Shahi to take up the issues of discord between provinces and federation as well as progress on the decisions taken by the previous meetings.
The Chairman of the Committee also referred to Chairman Senate's recent ruling on the issue of a CCI meeting not being convened by the Prime Minister.
He further stated as per Chairman's ruling if CCI meeting was not convened within 15 days, Prime Minister would be committing a serious violation. The committee decided that in the light of Chairman's ruling, the committee also urges Prime Minister to convene CCI meeting as per constitutional requirement.
Minister for IPC Riaz Hussain Pirzada informed the committee members about Chairman Senate's ruling as well as transcript of Sassi Palejo's speech to the Prime Minister regarding CCI meeting. He further stated that IPC has also prepared two reports which require Prime Minister's consent before these are tabled before the Senate and National Assembly.
Balochistan government also accused the federal government of not honoring promises made during the CCI meeting in 2013 regarding refurbishing electricity network in the province. "We have given the concurrence for power policy in July 2013 CCU meeting, subject to that transmission and distribution system would be revamped. Ministry of Water and Power has not prepared any action plan to replace the obsolete transmission and distribution system during last two and half years and now it blames the transmission system for higher load-shedding in the province."
Senior officials of Ministry of Water and Power was of the view that the federal government has made some allocation in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for up-gradation of the grid system and it would be done phase-wise.
Secretary IPC Balochistan government Muhammad Ali Khakar informed the committee that Ministry of Petroleum and Natural resources was not sharing information with the province about production bonus due against oil and gas exploration and production companies operating in the province.
"We have taken up the issue with Ministry of Petroleum on May 2015 and requested them to provide information of petroleum concessional agreements with the oil companies as well as the amount of production bonus for social welfare of the area against," said Kakar, adding province needs this information because the matter is a provincial subject after the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment.
He informed the committee members that prior to the 18th Constitutional Amendment, federal government was collecting production bonus and was distributing to the provinces but post amendment, provinces are allowed to directly collect the amount from the oil companies.
Kakar continued that now the hitch is that federal government has signed petroleum concession agreements with the oil companies and Balochistan government does not have any information about agreements as well as total and district wise amount against the oil companies. Ministry of Petroleum did not provide any information to the province about agreements and production bonus against exploration and production companies, the secretary IPC added.
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