Monday, November 25, 2013

Opp parties still to nominate head of NA committees

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Opposition parties in the National Assembly (NA) are dragging their feet to finalise the names of chairpersons to head standing committees, allocated as per their numerical strength in the House.

Parliamentary sources told Daily Times on Sunday that opposition parties – Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) – are not fulfilling their commitment to finalise the names of chairpersons of nine House committees, which are to be led by their members of the assembly.

Before Ashura, they had requested NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq to hold the election of these chairpersons as per agreement with the government. The speaker had then put on hold the election.

However, after more than one week of Ashura, no headway has been made by opposition parties and on contrary they are blaming the assembly secretariat for delay in election.

“Yes, opposition parties had requested for election of their chairpersons of the committees concerned after Ashura,” a spokesman for the National Assembly confirmed when he was contacted on the issue.

On the other hand, the government side has completed election of chairpersons for 11 committees of the National Assembly.

The PPP, PTI and MQM are also squabbling over as to who should head the committees allocated to them under the agreement with government.

A glaring example of this is the indecisiveness on part of PPP about appointing chairperson of highly important parliamentary committee – the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

A faction within the PPP supported by top leadership wants MNA Dr Azra Afzal, sister of party Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, to head this committee. Whereas the other side favours Syed Naveed Qamar, a PPP stalwart from Sindh and former federal minister, for the slot.

On the other hand, the government is not interested in seeing any of them on this slot and it wants Syed Khurshid Shah, opposition leader in the National Assembly, to act as chairperson of this key parliamentary committee that has to take up audit reports of the last PPP government.

Parliamentary sources described the delay on part of opposition parties “uncalled for” and termed it a great obstacle in way of proper functioning of parliament when its standing committees have not been formed to scrutinise the working of various ministries and departments.

All the committees of the assembly were supposed to be constituted on July 5. But only 11 have been made functional out of 28 committees, excluding PAC and Kashmir Committee.

 

Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk

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