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  • Aug 22nd, 2017
  • Comments Off on Rs 30 billion funds to parliamentarians: opposition threatens privilege motion against government
The opposition lawmakers in the National Assembly on Monday threatened the government of moving a privilege motion if it fails to clarify its position by today (Tuesday) on recently released Rs 30 billion development funds to the parliamentarians, out of which they claimed of receiving not even a single penny.

Speaking on a point of order, Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Khursheed Shah said that a section of media has reported that the government has released Rs 30 billion development funds to the parliamentarians, but the fact is that opposition members have not received even a penny of the amount.

He urged the government to clarify the report on the floor of the house and explain to the opposition about disbursement of the funds. The government may have released funds to the members of treasury benches and it should clarify the same; otherwise rivals of the opposition members in their constituencies would accuse them of embezzling the funds which are never released to them.

To this, Speaker Ayaz Sadiq directed Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Shaikh Aftab Ahmad to clarify the government's position on the disbursement of the funds. Aftab said that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wanted to initiate development schemes in all the four provinces with the help of the provincial governments and for it the letters were also written to the provincial governments for cooperation. The federal government asked the provinces to share cost of the projects, but only Punjab and Balochistan provinces accorded support to the proposal, he said.

He urged the opposition members from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh to ask their respective governments as to why they failed to cooperate with the federal government to initiate development projects in the provinces.

The minister, however, failed to convince the opposition members as the latter kept hooting during his response on the disbursement of development funds to, what they said, only to the members of the treasury benches. Responding to the minister's statement, Khursheed Shah said the government cannot oppress the opposition members by giving misleading statement on the floor of the house. He demanded a specific answer from the minister on the issue, advising the government ministers not to vitiate environment of the house as this would impact the overall political situation outside the Parliament.

Shah also advised the treasury members to act wisely as they have already got their prime minister disqualified through their own mistakes. He urged the government to clarify its position by Tuesday (today) on disbursement of development funds to the parliamentarians; otherwise the joint opposition would move a privilege motion against it. "This would be a unique privilege motion against the sitting government," he added.



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