KARACHI - Another seven PPP MPAs on Saturday were elected chairmen of as many standing committees of the Sindh Assembly ‘unanimously’ amid boycott of the major opposition parties including the PTI, MQM-P and GDA.

The committees whose chairmen were elected included transport and mass transit department; finance; home; food; agriculture, energy and irrigation. All of them belong to the ruling Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians.

It is pertinent to mention here that members of the 20 standing committees were elected unopposed from the provincial assembly after the major opposition parties including Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) boycotted the process whereas the ruling PPPP, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) took part in the process. There are 34 standing committees of the Sindh Assembly and polls for election of members of another 14 standing committees were postponed so that other opposition parties could be accommodated later.

There are 34 standing committees of Sindh Assembly

The opposition parties had boycotted the process after the provincial government refused to accept their demand for conceding chairmanship of the PAC to the opposition leader in the assembly.

The provincial assembly secretariat had issued notifications for the four standing committees’ chairmanship while three others whose elections were held on Saturday would be issued soon.

According to rule 164 (1) of the rules of business of the provincial assembly, the chairman of a committee shall be elected by the committee from amongst the members of the committee.

Provincial assembly lawmaker Anthony Naveed has been elected as chairman of the standing committee on transport and mass transit, Jam Madad Ali as chairman of the committee on finance; Faryal Talpur as chairman of the committee on Home and Rana Hamir Singh would lead the committee on Food.

The elections of three committees were held on Saturday in which Zia Abbas Shah was elected chairman of Agriculture committee, Arbab Lutfullah on committee on energy and Abdul Aziz Junejo to head committee on irrigation.

The meetings of the four committees scheduled for Saturday were postponed due to absence of the lawmakers. They included works and services; services, general administration and coordination department; forest, wildlife, environment.

SUB-COMMITTEES BRAINSTORM

SITTING UP OF SITB

The Sindh Government has moved ahead with its plan to establish a Sindh Informational Technology Board (SITB) on autonomous basis with involvement of the relevant IT experts from the private sector. In this regard, two special sub-committees of Sindh IT Advisory Committee conducted their maiden meeting. The sub-committees on Legal &Administrative issues and Technical & Policymaking matters conducted their meeting on the directives of Sindh Minister for Information Science and Technology Minister Nawabzada Muhammad Taimur Talpur.

Sindh Secretary for Information Science and Technology Ali Bahadur Qazi chaired meetings of both the sub-committees. The meeting of the legal and administrative sub-committee took into consideration various issues related to formation of Sindh IT Board.

It was proposed in the meeting that the proposed board of the province would comprise of IT experts from the private sector and universities. The meeting decided that a managing-director and his subordinate staff would be appointed for running the affairs of IT Board.

Sindh IT secretary informed the meeting it was the wish of Sindh IT Minister that the proposed board would comprise of the highly qualified and experienced experts of the field as their appointment will be carried out purely on merit without any influence or recommendation.

He said that all government departments had to extensively rely on IT for promoting the cause of E-governance. The provincial IT secretary said on the occasion that developed countries had even started relying on IT for modernizing their agriculture sector and for increasing their agro produce. He said that the example of the USA was known to everyone in this regard, which had modernized its cultivation techniques with the use of IT enabling it to export wheat and its other agricultural produce to several countries.

Different IT experts who attended the meetings informed its participants about the progress made in different countries for promoting the concept of E-governance as they also suggested various methods to further translate these international IT models in the case of Sindh government.