The Sindh Assembly on Thursday unanimously adopted a resolution that asked the federal government to end natural gas load-shedding in the province.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) that is ruling party at the Centre, also voted in favour of the resolution, although it is the Opposition party in the provincial legislature.
MQM's Muhammad Hussain tabled the resolution. The entire House, including Opposition parties' members voted favourably to ask the federal government to ensure gas supply to Sindh for being the primary producer of the natural fuel.
MQM's Khawaja Izhar slammed the ruling PPP for failing to advocate Sindh's rights at the CCI meetings. He said the Sindh government evinced keen interest in royalty than gas itself under Article 151 of the Constitutions.
"The province should figure out how much gas it needs from its total production," he said, warning that if the gas crisis prolonged he would stage a sit-in in along with public in his constituency to register protest.
"It is the province's Constitutional right to access the utility. Sindh has every right to use gas first," leader of the opposition Firdous Shamim Naqvi, who is from PTI, said at the legislature, demanding that the gas should be supplied from total production to its producer first. However, he said that state of poor law and order held back the drilling for finding new fuel resources. He said that explorations are under way to find new offshore gas and petroleum resources.
"If new resources don't come out, then the nation will have to rely on the expensive imported fuel," he warned. Despite the Prime Minister's assurance, gas crisis prevails. Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah emphasised that the federal government should take up the gas issue to its next agenda. He also asked those PTI's federal ministers who belong to the province to raise voice for the rights of Sindh in the cabinet. He assured the federal government of cooperation.
Muhammad Hussain, the resolution mover, said that the gas load shedding is a violation of Article 158 of the Constitution. He said that Sindh's problems would last if the federal government did not support the province. He said Sindh produces 70 percent of the country's total output. GDA's Nand Kumar appealed to the premier to take notice of the gas load shedding in Sindh. He said his party's ruling coalition would not survive at the expense of public miseries.
The house also adopted 'The Sindh Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases Bill, 2018,' to set up the institute to treat and facilitate a maximum number of patients in the province. At present there is only one cardiovascular hospital in Sindh known as the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) located in Karachi. The NICVD does not take care of all patients coming from different parts of Sindh, giving urgency for another such institute, says the bill.
"In order to facilitate poor cardiac patients of the province by providing quality care as well as to enhance the teaching skills for undergraduate and postgraduate and to make them at par with the international counterpart, it is expedient to establish an institute known as the Sindh Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and to enact the law in the matter," statement of objects and reasons of the bills says. The headquarters of the institute will be at Karachi or Sukkur.
The house also adopts "Code of Civil Procedures (Amendment) Bill 2018. Earlier, Murad Ali Shah told the house that the merger of Sindh Bank and Summit Bank had been deferred for the time being after the Supreme Court took notice of the banks' unification. The State Bank of Pakistan had asked the Sindh government to complete the banks merger without delays.
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