All PTI women members of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly continued their boycott of the proceedings of the house for the second consecutive day. Out of 22 women legislators, the ruling PTI has 10 MPAs and all of them are boycotting the proceedings of the house over complains of discriminatory attitude with them in development schemes, decision making and indifferent attitude of the provincial government.
On Friday when the house resumed proceedings with a Deputy Speaker, Dr Meher Taj Roghani, who is herself a woman, was asked by the women opposition MPAs to bring the boycotting PTI MPAs into the house. The PML-N Woman MPA Sobia Khan, Meraj Hamayun of the QWP and then male colleagues stood up jointly and asked the Deputy Speaker about bringing PTI women MPAs into the house.
The Deputy Speaker said that she had tasked the Provincial Minister and QWP women MPA Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli to hold negotiations with them. But, due to her absence from the house, she tasked Senior Minister Sikandar Hayat Sherpao to persuade the boycotting PTI legislators to participate in the house proceedings.
Meanwhile, the leader of opposition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Maulana Lutf-ur-Rehman has called for the constitution of a house committee to conduct an inquiry into the utilisation and allocation of annual budget in the province. He said that on the occasion of the passage of the annual budget, the Chief Minister Pervez Khattak made a commitment with the opposition that their proposals in development schemes will be given weight and for this purpose a formal meeting would also be convened with them. However, despite the passage of seven months of the current financial year, no such moot was convened.
Criticising the fiscal policies of the PTI government, he said that soon after the passage of the budget from the provincial assembly it was curtailed. He said that in their questions they have termed it a deficit budget and was later proved so.
He complained that government is providing development funds to treasury benches while opposition is being pushed to wall. He said that in budget, the government allocated token amount for various schemes, but later diverted hefty funds.
For instance, he said that the provincial government has recently announced Rs 3 billion huge publicity campaign and initially a fund of Rs 1 billion has also been allocated for it. He asked the government to inform the house about the source of the fund and utilisation of the annual budget.
Shaukat Yousafzai, a PTI legislator termed the contentions of the opposition leader genuine, said that they support it. However, in clarification of the situation, he said that a hefty sum of Rs 3 billion has been allocated for the local governments. However, he also taunted the performance of the previous governments of MMA and ANP in the province.
Syed Jaffar Shah of ANP said that the government had illegally amended the budget document and said that instead of Shaukat Yousafzai, any provincial minister or advisor should have replied them.
On this occasion, Sobia Khan of PML-N and Meraj Hamayun of QWP and other women legislators of opposition benches stood up to talk about the boycott of the house proceedings by the PTI women legislators. The Deputy Speaker said that she had tasked Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli for holding negotiations with the protesting PTI women legislators. But, due to unavailability of Tahirkheli in the house she asked the Senior Minister Sikandar Hayat Sherpao for persuade the women MPAs. Later on, the walkout of the joint opposition left Deputy Speaker with no option other than adjourning the proceedings for Asar prayers and tea break.