Sindh govt's control of local bodies irks opposition

The first amendment states that elections for the reserved seats for local councillors will be held in the same way as that of the National Assembly, Senate and provincial assemblies. This means that political parties will receive seats as per their representation in the House.

The second amendment authorizes the provincial government to monitor the local bodies.

The decision was met by protests in the Sindh Assembly by the opposition members who raised slogans against the government and caused disruption in the proceedings.

This forced the Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani to suspend the proceedings of the assembly for 10 minutes, but the opposition did not cool down, after which the session was prorogued till Thursday (tomorrow).

Earlier, Senior Minister for Education and Parliamentary Affairs Nisar Ahmed Khoro presented the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) 2016 bill. However, opposition leader Khawaja Izhaul Haq objected and said that a mockery was being made of the local governments.

He said that the bill was against the interests of the public and the Sindh government was just experimenting against the local bodies.

Khoro responded that they had not made a mockery of it nor were they responsible for delaying the process for they had not approached the courts over it. He said that they wanted to strengthen the system and the amendments were being made for this purpose.

MQM member Sardar Ahmed said that the bill for the third amendment to the Sindh Local Government Act had already been passed and so it cannot be repeated.

Khawaja Izhaul Haq said that there can be no more amendments after those made upon the directives of the Supreme Court. At this, Khoro replied that the bill passed on Tuesday was not according to the orders of the apex court.

The bills were tabled amidst slogans of ‘No, No’ and ‘Shame, Shame’ by the opposition who stood up from their seats and rallied towards Speaker’s dais followed by ‘Go Corruption Go’ and ‘No Corruption No’ chants.

The bill, however, was passed among all the commotion.