LAHORE - Deputy Speaker Sindh Assembly Syeda Shehla Raza is convinced that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has proficiency in Urdu language and needed no tutor to coach him on this count.
“Bilawal is fluent in Urdu and can communicate with party men with ease. There is no need to hire an Urdu tutor for him”, she remarked in an interview to The Nation.
She was asked to comment on reports that she had been appointed as tutor to teach Urdu to the PPP Chairman.
Shehla termed the news regarding her new assignment as misreporting by the media, which she added, had also been running stories about her learning English language from Bilawal Bhutto.
“Had he really needed an Urdu tutor many good teachers were available in Pakistan and abroad to teach him”, she said, adding, that media perhaps got this impression due to her frequent meetings with Bilawal which were infact held to discuss party matters.
She further explained that she along with some other party men was working to set up a media cell and an election cell ahead of the coming elections.
“It is due to this reason that meetings with party Chairman takes place quite often”, she stated.
Shehla Raza’s political career began in 1986 when she became the Joint Secretary of women wing of Peoples’ Students Federation (PSF) at Karachi University.
Later, she was elected General Secretary of the PPP’s Ladies Wing Karachi division. She was elected Deputy Speaker of Present Sindh Assembly in 2013. Asked about not-so- good image of her party relating to issues of governance,she complained that media could not see beyond its set biases against the PPP. “It has always its eyes fixed on negative things taking place in Sindh”.
She alleged that media had developed a penchant for portraying the negative side of the PPP while ignoring all the good work. She, however, admitted that it was due to weak media management of her party.
Shehla also said that PPP lawmakers in Sindh preferred to work in their constituencies rather than appearing on the media to defend the party and to highlight the work their government was doing for public welfare.
Asked to innumerate some major achievements of the PPP which could not get the media attention, she came up with a long list of initiatives her party had taken during its last stint in power.
She took credit for the Constitutional reforms and accomplishments on the foreign policy front.
She said Sindh government had conducted a survey in drought-hit Tharparker district.
Following this exercise, she said, over 1000 villages were identified for provision of ‘Ready to use Therapeutic Food (RUFT) free of cost to the people with food deficiency. She also mentioned installation of RO plants in Thar district to overcome the issue of water scarcity there.
She complemented Sindh Health Minister Jam Mehtab Mehr for his initiatives undertaken to improve health care facilities in the province. “But the problem with the Minister is that he works more and speaks less and this is the reason that his good work cannot get media attention”, she said in a lighter vein.
Asked which Assembly session proved the toughest one for her in the last over two years, she replied that she felt under tremendous pressure when the Local Government Bill was tabled in the Assembly last year.
“The unruly and unrelenting lawmakers tore apart copies of the bill and threw at me. “They created a situation which seemed difficult to control. But not only did I managed to control the situation, the House also passed four other bills in the same sitting”, she boasted.