Zubair Qureshi
Whereas a number of bills have been passed or returned unsigned by the President House, there is one such bill that has not yet even been forwarded to the Aiwan-e-Sadr despite the fact that the Upper House of the Parliament passed it on August 7.
More than 15 days in the line yet the bill titled ‘Protection of Family Life & Wedlock Bill 2023” is lying either in the Senate Secretariat or the Prime Minister’s Office and no one has bothered to forward it to the President House for signing.
Recently, President Arif Alvi returned around 13 bills without signing and asked the Parliament to reconsider them. On the other hand, he signed a number of bills also, making them act of parliament but the bill related to 300 teachers of Islamabad whose family life and career relied on the passage of the bill has not yet been moved to the President House.
The sources, familiar with the development, told Pakistan Observer on Tuesday that since the bill belonged to the teachers’ welfare, which has never been a top priority of any political party or its government, the same mindset prevails in the government of Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar. The officers of the PMO or Senate Secretariat also understand that it was a ‘less-important’ bill and no one would ever hold them accountable for delaying it.
To a question if President Arif Alvi will raise any objection to the bill, a senior official of the President House said raising an objection or not raising an objection was a matter of secondary nature. “First and foremost, the bill should be put before the President and if it is genuinely concerned with the welfare of the lady teachers working in Islamabad schools under wedlock as the title suggests, I think he will have no problem signing it,” said the president. Meanwhile, senior officials of the PM Office and Senate Secretariat when contacted admitted the bill was lying at the table of a Deputy Secretary (DS) and the officer concerned owing to some family emergency was on leave. When asked what the normal procedure was in case an officer was on leave, he said it depended on how important the legislation was considered. “Teachers’ matter is not so important and it could wait,” he said. The affected teachers, on the other hand, have expressed their surprise and anguish over the usual bureaucratic mindset prevailing in PM Kakar’s government that officials were deciding on their own which bills should be forwarded to the President House .
