ISLAMABAD, April 30, 2021: The Provincial Assembly of Sindh continued pre-budget discussion and 13 lawmakers participated in debate on it, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet on Friday.

Following are some key observations of the House proceedings during the sixth sitting of the 20th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for two hours and 35 minutes.
• The sitting started at 03:15 pm against the scheduled time of 02:00 pm.
• The speaker chaired the sitting for an hour and 22 minutes while a member of panel of chairperson presided over the rest of the proceedings.
• The deputy speaker was absent.
• The leader of the house (chief minister) did not attend the sitting.
• The opposition leader attended the proceedings for 16 minutes.
• Twenty-nine legislators (17 percent) were present at the outset and 16 (six percent) at the end of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of PTI, PPPP, and MMAP attended the proceedings while the leaders of GDA, MQMP, and TLP did not participate in the sitting.
• Five out of nine minority lawmakers were present.

Representation and Responsiveness

• Thirteen lawmakers – PPPP (6), PTI and MQMP (3 each) and one of GDA – participated in pre-budget debate and also spoke on budget execution reports for last two quarters of the year 2020. They consumed two hours and three minutes of the proceedings.

Order and Institutionalization

• Two lawmakers spoke on points of order (POs) for two minutes mainly related to non-laying of the budget execution report for third quarter of the year 2020-2021.

• The House was adjourned to meet again on Monday, May 3, 2021 at 02:00 pm.

 Transparency

• ‘List of Business’ was available to the legislators, observers and others.
• The attendance of lawmakers was not available to the observers and media.

 This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the Sindh Assembly proceedings conducted by Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF), a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted