LAHORE - The provincial legislators unanimously passed a resolution on Tuesday against the practice of early age marriages, which is becoming source of certain problems in the society.
However, this unanimity achieved among the house by somehow convincing JI parliamentary leader Dr Waseem Akhtar. He was of the opinion that campaign against early age marriages was being run under a well-planned western conspiracy against the Muslim world as the early age wedlock was based on the Islamic teachings. Punjab Assembly session started with a delay of one hour under the chair of Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal.
Treasury member Azma Zahid Bukhari on Private Members’ Day moved a resolution suggesting lawmaking to halt early age marriages but the JI leader opposed that. He joined the house after presenting his point of view on the issue of the insistence of mixed voices from both treasury and opposition. However, after his agreement, the resolution was declared in the house as unanimously passed.
On this occasion, Punjab Minister Nadeem Kamran told the House that the government would definitely consider the point of view of Dr Waseem while drafting legislation on the subject.
The house also unanimously passed another resolution moved by the treasury member Ilyas Chinyoti, following the directions of Islamic Ideology Council (IIC) for the correction of English terms relating to some Islamic words.
The provincial legislature also passed a resolution of Nighat Sheikh.
Treasury member Amjad Ali Javed moved an adjournment motion against the decision of Provincial Zakat Council (PZC) to give contract of distribution of Zakat through Easy Paisa Scheme of a private foreign mobile company.
He pleaded through his motion that it was a scheme to oblige the foreign cellular company and it would get more than Rs40 million as its commission for providing the service. Nadeem Kamran, replying to Amjad’s adjournment motion, told the house that the company would get only Rs13.292m in the head of commission and would also pay Rs1.8m tax on this amount.
He claimed that the government made this decision to make Zakat accessible to 0.3m needy on fast track basis.
Earlier, Parliamentary Secretary Sajjad Gujjar answered the queries during the Question Hour on Housing, Urban Development and Public Health Engineering departments. Later on, the chair adjourned the session till today (Wednesday) at 10am.