Joint opposition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Wednesday staged a walkout of the provincial assembly to express solidarity with a treasury benches MPA protesting against the non-completion of a bridge in Dir Upper.
Mohammad Ali, a JI MPA from Dir Upper took the floor on adjournment motion against the non-completion of a bridge destroyed in the flood of 2010 in Pathrak (Maidan).
He told the house that 80 percent work on the bridge was already completed by the previous government. But, the passage of the three years of the present government, the remaining 20 percent work could not be completed. He said that delay in the completion is taking the lives of the people and especially mentioned an incident occurred on May 3, 2016 in which a person had lost his life.
The JI legislator, a component of the PTI-led coalition government said that no development work is going in the province, saying there is no democratic government and the affairs are actually run by the bureaucracy. He said that the recent heavy rains had turned his constituency into death cell and attributed the death of the child into a murder.
Criticising the pace of development work in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he said that the construction of such bridges take only five days in Punjab.
To pacify the angry young colleague, the parliamentary leader of JI, Inayatullah Khan took the floor and admitted the negligence of the department. He said that Secretary, Communication and Works (C&W) and Executive Engineer (EXN) will be summoned to prepare time-frame for the construction of the bridge. However, the efforts of Inayatullah failed to pacify the angry legislator, who insisted on reply that also on the floor of the house within a short period of 10 minutes.
Similarly, Reshad Khan, a MPA-N legislator from Shangla said that rains and flood have played havoc in his constituency and the buildings of schools and hospitals have been damaged. Similarly, he said that the national natural disaster has damaged houses, but the people are still awaiting compensation.
Advisor to Chief Minister on C&W, Akbar Ayub assured that if the funds are available then it will be constructed within a period of six months. He said that procurement has been started, but tendering process has to take time. But, the JI MPA was still insisting on timeframe for the construction of the bridge.
The opposition joined the protest of the JI legislator and they started chanting the slogans of shame-shame which created ruckus in the house.
The angry JI MPA announced walk out of the house, which was also followed by the joint opposition. But, in the meanwhile, Advisor to CM on C&W assured the completion of work on the bridge within a period of three months.
The Deputy Speaker, Dr Meher Taj Roghani formed a two-member delegation comprising Senior Minister Sikandar Hayat Khan Sherpao and Special Assistant on Information, Mushtaq Ghani for bringing the opposition back to the house.
Later, both joint opposition and JI legislator end their boycott and returned to join the proceedings of the house.