ISLAMABAD, August 10, 2016: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly transacted most of its agenda and passed the KP Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2016 amid walk out by the opposition on Wednesday, says Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in Daily Factsheet.

Members’ Participation in 4^th Sitting of the 20^th Session

• The KP Assembly met for an hour and 31 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1512 hours against the scheduled time of 1500 hours.
• Thirty-two lawmakers (26%) were present at the start while 44 (35%) at the adjournment of the sitting. A maximum of 50 members (40%) were observed to be present at one point of the sitting.
• The Speaker chaired the entire sitting.
• The Deputy Speaker was also present.
• The Chief Minister was not present while the Leader of the Opposition attended the entire sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of JI, QWP, PML-N and ANP attended the proceedings.
• One minority member was present.
• Twelve members applied for leave.

Output

• The House adopted a resolution to declare July 8 as National Charity Day in connection with the death anniversary of Abdul Sattar Edhi.
• Provincial Minister for Law presented the KP Taking Over of the Industrial Estate or Economic Zones Ordinance 2016.
• The House passed the KP Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
• The House witnessed introduction of KP Tuberculosis Notification Bill 2016 while another bill on the agenda – the KP Prohibition of Tobacco and Protection of Non-Smoker Health Bill, 2016 – could not be introduced.
• The House adopted two reports relating to the Standing Committees on Health and Finance.
• The report of Standing Committee on Agriculture was presented in the House.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House debated an Adjournment Motion (AM) regarding the sense of deprivation among the people of South Districts despite having huge natural resources. A JUI-F lawmaker while sponsoring the AM took six minutes to express his views while the Provincial Minister for Law spoke on it for five minutes.
• The House took up two Calling Attention Notices (CANs). The first CAN was regarding non-payment to those persons whose lands had been acquired for building small dam near Abbottabad while the other notice was about non-allotment of plots to the members registered by provincial government for housing scheme at Jalozai.
• Two out of five starred questions appearing on the agenda were answered by the relevant department while three questions were not considered due to the absence of movers. In addition, lawmakers also raised two supplementary questions.

Order and Institutionalization

• Five Points of Order consumed eight minutes of the proceedings.
• The entire opposition staged a walk out for 12 minutes when the Chair did not allow an ANP lawmaker to speak on the KP Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2016.

Transparency

• Orders of the Day was available to legislators, observers and other stakeholders.
• Attendance of lawmakers was not available to media and observers.

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the KP Assembly’s proceedings conducted by the United Rural Development Organization (URDO) – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted