ISLAMABAD: Three top communications officials of the federal government; Minister Murad Saeed, Secretary Zafar Hasan and Chairman National Highway Authority (NHA) Captain Khurram Agha (retd) remained absent on Friday from the meeting of Senate Standing Committee on Communications, which attracted the ‘wrath’ of the Senate panel that accused the politicians and bureaucrats of “making mockery of Parliament and its committees.”
“This is the third consecutive meeting in which the communications minister has not bothered to show up. What could be more insulting than that?” remarked the panel’s Chairman ‘Prince’ Ahmed Umer Ahmedzai from Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), presiding over the meeting.
“The communications minister is himself a parliamentarian. Has he forgotten the sanctity… the prestige of the Parliament? Does he have no regard for the Parliament and its committees? This is a bit too insulting. Too hard for us to digest,” he added.
Danesh Kumar, another BAP senator, endorsed the remarks of his party colleague. “This is too much an embarrassment for all of us to bear. I can’t stand it. It is no more possible for me to sit here and witness all this embarrassment. I am going,” he said and staged a walkout, in protest of the absence of communications minister, secretary communications and chairman NHA, from the committee meeting.
Kamil Ali Agha of Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) also followed suit. “I wonder why I am sitting here and witnessing all this embarrassment. There is no point for me to be here after seeing that both politicians and bureaucrats are making mockery of Parliament and its committees. I am also leaving,” he commented before leaving the committee hall.
Umer Farooq from Awami National Party (ANP) also took on the top communications officials but refrained from staging a walkout.
“All this is going on in front of our eyes. It seems that for the government and its officials, we the parliamentarians, do not exist at all.
Shall we sit here and witness this entire melodrama like silent spectators?” he asked and demanded of the committee chairman to do something ‘concrete’ about the absent officials.
The chairman committee, however, only observed that the three absent officials “must make sure that they are present in the next meeting, otherwise, we would be very….very annoyed.”
In a bid to pacify the angry senators, the additional secretary communications told the committee that secretary communications and chairman NHA could not attend the Senate panel’s meeting as they were giving briefings to Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
“But where has the minister disappeared? Is he too giving briefing to anyone?” asked Farooq, the ANP senator.
He suggested that the Senate panel’s meetings be rescheduled if their schedule coincided with other important meetings.
The Senate panel was scheduled to take up the proposal to convert Quetta-Jacobabad Road into motorway, and receive briefings from top communications officials regarding different NHA infrastructure projects worth over a billion rupees, toll tax collection at different points of national highways and motorways and relevant issues.
Other committee members including Saifullah Abro, Manzoor Kakar, Shammim Afridi, Muhammad Akram, Ahmed Khan, and officials from Communications Ministry and NHA attended the meeting.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021