Opposition in the Punjab Assembly on Friday demanded a high-level and transparent inquiry against those involved in the Rawalpindi Ring Road scam.
The house witnessed pandemonium as both the treasury and opposition benches hurled allegations of corruption against each other when the issue of Rawalpindi Ring Road was discussed.
Speaking on the occasion. senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lawmaker Samiullah Khan said there was a deliberate attempt to delay the answer related to the scam for eight months and the house was given information that was contrary to fads.
The PML-N lawmaker said that the names of some bureaucrats and politicians appeared in the scam and an FIR was lodged against the bureaucrats only, while influential facilitators were exonerated. He went on to say that the names of Federal Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan and Prime Minister’s close aide, Zulfi Bukhari, appeared in the scam but no action was taken against them. Both the prime minister and chief minister were unaware of the scam, he added. Resignations would have been demanded if such a scam had appeared in any other government, he said.
Samiullah was of the view that the scams of no less than Rs100 billion surfaced in the PTI government, including the sugar and flour scams. He said not a single brick was laid in the road project but a huge amount of Rs131 billion was wasted. He said both the PM and the Punjab CM gave benefits to their cronies through this scam.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Secretary for Housing Malik Taimoor Masood, who himself belongs to Rawalpindi, said that the prime minister had an initiative and he himself unearthed the scandal. “A transparent inquiry was initiated to probe the scam and the case is still registered with the anti-corruption authorities,” he said. He was of the view that some politicians involved in corruption of billions of rupees failed to give the money trail and now they were giving the government lectures.
Earlier, the session of the Punjab Assembly started after a delay of almost two hours from its scheduled time, under the chair of Panel of Chairman Mian Shafi. Minister for Industries. Commerce and Investment Mian Aslam lqbal gave answers related to his department during the question hour.
He told the house that transparent requirements would be ensured in all technical institutes run by his ministry. Replying to a question of PML-N MPA Aunaiza Fatima, he said that the government was providing loans to skilled but unemployed youth.
He added that the government wanted to support every unemployed youth in order to make him self- sufficient through different schemes of loans.
He was of the view that the Punjab government had allocated billions of rupees for unemployed youth to create employment opportunities for them. “We are also planning to establish industrial zones in Punjab on the land owned by the government and work is underway in this regard” he added.
