ISLAMABAD, January 3, 2020: The Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) addressed most of its agenda on Friday and approved a government bill for regulating the power crushers, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during sixth sitting of the tenth session:

Members’ Participation

• The Assembly met for an hour and 53 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1102 hours against the scheduled time of 1000 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the sitting for an hour and 38 minutes while rest of the sitting was chaired by a Member of Panel of Chairpersons.
• The Deputy Speaker also attended the proceedings.
• The Leaders of the House and the Opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 45 (31%) legislators were present at the start and 28 (19%) at the end of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of ANP and PML-Q attended the sitting.
• Three out of four minority members were present.

Output

• Moved by the Minister for Law, the House unanimously passed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Power Crusher Installation, Operation and Regulation Bill, 2019.
• The House deferred the consideration of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Safety and Halal Food Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2019 and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2019.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House took up seven out of 12 starred questions appearing on the list while the lawmakers asked six supplementary questions.
• The government responded to two out of four Call Attention Notices (CANs) regarding subsidy on woods for Galyaat Region and irregularities in appointment of staff in the Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar. Another CAN regarding farming of strawberry in Malakand division was not taken up due to mover’s absence while a CAN regarding rapid spread of Leishmaniosis disease in Peshawar was deferred.
• The House discussed an Adjournment Motion (AM) regarding payment of royalty to the province against its electricity. The discussion continued for 21 minutes and three lawmakers participated in it. Another AM regarding Council of Common Interests’ (CCI) decisions concerning KP was admitted for discussion during an upcoming sitting.

Order and Institutionalization

• As many as seven lawmakers spoke on four Points of Order consuming 15 minutes of the proceedings.
• The PPPP lawmakers pointed out quorum twice during the proceedings. On first instance at 1215 hours, it was found complete when counting was made while at 1252 hours it was found incomplete leading to adjournment of sitting to meet again on January 6, 2020 (Monday) at 1400 hours.

 Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ 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 KP Assembly proceeding conducted by United Rural Development Organization (URDO) – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted