Karachi: Sindh provincial assembly on Friday passed a resolution against the controversial Kalabagh Dam amid pandemonium of the opposition parties which also ultimately voted for the resolution.
For the second consecutive day the debate on the dam was going on when Nusrat Sehar Abbasi, the member of opposition party remarked on the ongoing speech of Zahid Bhurgari, ruling party member. That sparked the volley of accusation and counter accusation from opposition and the treasury benches.
Speaker of the assembly Nisar Ahmad Khoro kept ordering the house to maintain decorum but the shouting continued. Some adverse remarks by provincial minister Rafiq Engineer also aggravated the situation and the opposition members mounted on the benches and chanted slogans against the government.
One of the opposition member said that the Pakistan People’s Party had dual policy on the Kalambagh Dam and it supported the dam in the Punjab province which was always supportive to the dam whereas in the rest of the three provinces the party opposed the construction of the dam.
However, after the house was calmed down, the resolution was unanimously passed by the assembly against the dam.
The controversy arose after a recent verdict of the Lahore High Court, which ruled and ordered the government to start construction of the dam which was shelved by the ruling party after it assumed power in 2008.
The court verdict stirred the debate among other provinces except for the Punjab province as all the three provinces had approved resolution against the construction of the dam many years back.
Meanwhile, the US will provide $200 million (Dh734 million) for Diamer-Bhasha dam project, Finance Minister Hafeez Shaikh said in Washington, the Pakistani media reported.
Shaikh told a news conference in Washington that the US was also funding repair work on four existing dams which would help boost electricity production by 900 megawatts.
He said the US has also promised to provide an instalment of $500-$600 million under Coalition Support Fund, which is meant to reimburse Pakistan for the cost of counter-insurgency operations, which had been withheld over a year due to tensions between the two countries.
