Provinces warned about Sipah-i-Sahaba

The government told the National Assembly on Tuesday it had asked provinces to keep a watch on the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba group, which is accused of fomenting recent violence in the Punjab province’s Jhang and Gojra towns.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik acknowledged there was a lot of truth in concern voiced by an opposition lawmaker from Jhang who said the government must act against the extremist religious group to avoid the kind of situation it had to face in Swat valley of the North West Frontier Province after Taliban rebels were allowed to thrive there.

The minister said it was a fact that Sipah-i-Sahaba had had been involved in terrorist activities in the past and added: ‘The provincial governments have been asked to keep a watch on its activities.’

PML-Q member Sheikh Waqqas Akram said Sipah-i-Sahaba activities were going on in Punjab unchecked by both the provincial and federal goverments and urged the PPP-led ruling coalition: ‘For God’s sake, you take things seriously.’

He said it had taken a struggle of some 15 years at a cost of hundreds of lives to subdue religious extremists in his Jhang district who were known for fomenting sectarian violence, and complained that ‘under a conspiracy these elements have been given an opportunity to make mischief again’, without specifying by whom.

The member said all of some 200 Sipah-i-Sahaba activists arrested in Jhang after a judge took a suo motu notice of the July 21 violence were later released ‘one by one’ and that he learned during a visit to Gojra that members of the same group attacked Christians in Gojra for unproven blasphemy, burning seven of them alive.

‘Don’t leave us at the mercy of these Maulvis,’ Mr Akram said in an appeal to the government.

He expressed his surprise that a leader of the group had been allowed to address the arrested group activists in jail and to go around the country without regard to what he called restrictions for banned organisations.

The interior minister said although two religious teachers had led processions from two Sipah-i-Sahaba mosques that engaged in Gojra violence, but said ‘we must wait for a report of inquiry being conducted by a high court judge’.

He acknowledged that under the existing rules and regulations the provincial governments were ‘supposed to monitor’ the banned groups, whose present number he put at 29.

A PML-N member from Multan district, Rana Mahmood-ul-Hassan, called for a joint action by the Punjab and Sindh police to check what he called heavily armed outlaws who he said kidnapped some 150 people for ransom, including 37 from his district, over the past few months.

PPP chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah said the ruling coalition would ask the interior ministry and the two provincial governments to take notice of the situation in which the member said the kidnappers would seek refuge in Sindh when pursued by the Punjab police and cross back into Punjab when chased by Sindh police.

SHAH OFFERS MINISTRY FOR PROBE: Earlier, Mr Shah and some other members of the house voiced concern about what they saw as unsubstantiated media reports about alleged corruption in government institutions, which the minister and another PPP members said were aimed to undermine parliament and the present democratic government.

Mr Shah offered the performance of the Employees Old Age Benefit Institution (EOBI) under his ministry to be probed by a house committee as he rejected corruption allegations in a press report against which he said he reserved the right to go to court.

The minister said there was a deliberate campaign to undermine parliament by what he called ‘exploiting’ corruption charges and said he would like such a probe committee to be headed by an opposition member and call those making the allegations to appear before it to provide a proof.

PML-N chief whip Sheikh Aftab Ahmed appeared sharing the minister’s concern but said efforts to undermine parliament would continue unless violators of the Constitution like former military president Pervez Musharraf were put in the dock.

PML-Q’s Riaz Hussain Pirzada said such allegations would continue to come until cognizance was taken of important happenings of the past for which he said a commission should be set up.

PPP information secretary Fauzia Wahab complained of what she called a campaign to vilify the country’s political leadership by ‘some anchors’ of private television channels that she did not specify, and said the practice of ‘levelling allegations without proof’ must stop.

APATHY TO CLEAN WATER?

Many eyebrows were raised as Minister for Special Initiatives Lal Mohammad Khan alleged lack of cooperation from provincial governments, particularly those of Sindh and the NWFP, in implementing a federal government programme to provide clean drinking water throughout the country.

‘The provincial governments are not taking interest,’ he said in response to an opposition call-attention notice, adding that the NWFP and Sindh had ‘totally failed’ before calling for the establishment of a Federal Clean Drinking Water Authority to take direct charge of the implementation of the projects in all the provinces and Azad Kashmir.

Speaker Fehmida Mirza, who chaired her first sitting of the present session on return from a foreign visit, shared the minister’s concern about what he called waste of huge funds put at the disposal of provincial government and promised to set up a house committee to look into the matter after her suggestion was endorsed by federal ministers Raja Pervez Ashraf (Water and Power) and Naveed Qamar (Privatisation and Petroleum and Natural Resources).

ALL WOMEN’S BILLS: On what was the second private members’ day of the current session, four private bills were introduced as the government did not oppose them --- all moved by women members, though two with male co-authors, to be studied by standing committees concerned before being taken up by the house for consideration.

One bill authored by Mrs Khalida Mansoor sought to remove difficulties faced by women civil servants by amending the Civil Servants Act of 1973 while another moved by Mrs Yasmeen Rehman with four other co-sponsors seeks to check misuse of job quota for disabled ‘special persons’ in government departments and to extend facilities like exempting them from standing in queues by providing them disability cards.

A Banking Companies (Amendment) Bill introduced by Begum Ishrat Ashraf --- with three other sponsors --- sought to remove what she called problems created by different forms and rules made by the banking companies and to lower interest rates.

A bill from Dr Attiya Inayatull seeks to amend the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929.