The call to allocate additional incentives for south Punjab dominated the Punjab Assembly proceedings on Friday as the opposition lawmakers from the region grilled the provincial government for not allocating appropriate funds for the area.
They lambasted the government over changing the priorities at the cost of the deprived people of south Punjab, which would amplify the demand for a separate province.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s son Abdul Qadir Gilani highlighted the deprivation of the millions of people in south Punjab who were affected by the last year’s devastating flood and said sufficient funds had not been reserved for rehabilitation process, resulting in agony for a majority of the affectees.
He called for providing Rs 50,000 to the flood victims as announced by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif during his visits to the effected areas and suggested an additional amount of Rs 0.1 million for each family to construct a room rather than establishing model villages in the effected districts with a huge amount.
Gilani also stressed the need of providing missing facilities in the already functional educational institutions instead of launching projects like Danish schools. Criticising the re-launch of Yellow Cab Scheme, he said the chief minister had insulted the graduate youth of the south Punjab by identifying them as ‘taxi drivers’, while their counterparts in Lahore were being offered jobs of assistant commissioners. He also rejected the Ashiana Housing Scheme, saying the fixed per unit price in the project was very high for a poor man.
He demanded the Punjab government to increase budgetary allocation for south Punjab from Rs 70 billion to Rs 100 billion. Mohsin Leghari of PML-Q claimed that the Punjab government’s overall debt had reached Rs 492 billion in 2011, which was a 39 per cent increase in the last two years and 75 per cent of the total budgetary outlay. He said debt servicing had mounted to about 25 per cent of development budget.
Mohsin asked Finance Minister Kamran Michael to tell the house if was there any alternate to run the projects especially in south Punjab in case they did not get any foreign aid as they had already announced to break the bagging bowl. He further demanded the provisional minister to inform about the actual amount of provincial debts, loans and interests on these loans.
“He should also inform the legislators about the further loans his government would get in the next fiscal year.”
Earlier opening the debate on budget, Ahsan-ul-Haq Ahsan of PPP said the PML-N government had increased the indirect taxes by five per cent while reducing the direct ones with same percentage, thus burdening the lower middle class instead of the elite people. The government would collect an amount of Rs 88 billion in the head of direct taxes while the indirect taxes were estimated to generate Rs 65 billion which was around 75 per cent of the total amount while it was only 70 per cent in the previous budgets. The opposition member said the Punjab government earned a debt of more than Rs 492 billions out which around Rs 416 billion had been obtained through foreign sources.
In his response, PML-N’s Ch Sarfaraz Afzal talked about a wrong perception, as he cited that the Punjab government had imposed new taxes on the big farm houses as well the luxury vehicles. He also defended the yellow cab and ashiana housing schemes. Later, Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal adjourned the session till Monday at 3pm.
