ISLAMABAD: Speaker National Assembly, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, admitted on Monday his failure to manage the maintenance of Parliament Lodges and proposed to outsource it in order to provide world-class facilities to the lawmakers.

In a statement, during the NA session, Sadiq said that he and two of his fellow ex-speakers Asad Qaiser and Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, have all failed to properly manage the maintenance of Parliament Lodges due to meagre budget allocated for this purpose.

“We tried our best but the maintenance of the Parliament Lodges is challenging as 90 percent of the budget allocated for its upkeep goes towards the salaries. If outsourced, things could be managed with 50 percent budget,” he added.

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He also suggested outsourcing the maintenance of Parliament House as soon as possible, saying if outsourced, both the Parliament House and the Parliament Lodges could easily be maintained at a very low budget.

He said that deputy speaker NA Murtaza Shah is working on the proposal to outsource the Parliament House and the Parliament Lodges, and hopefully, the issue will be finalised soon.

“I would like to urge the deputy speaker to finalise its recommendations in this regard as managing the maintenance of Parliament House and the Parliament Lodges has become nearly impossible,” he added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024