The ruling party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) told the Senate on Wednesday that an estimated 2,500 bureaucrats, four of whom are federal secretaries, possess dual nationality, sources said on Thursday.
PML-N Senator Afnan Ullah Khan during the current budget debate said he had tabled a bill in the House to prohibit civil servants from possessing dual nationality.
The concerned Senate committee unanimously cleared the bill, but the House has yet to consider it.
Senator Afnan raised a question about the allegiance of people possessing the citizenship of two nations at a time.
Citing an example of a recent episode of foreign agents present in Iran, he expressed the fear that Pakistan also has Zionist agents and warned that not taking action at the right time may prove expensive.
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) legislator Quratul-Ain Marri, in her critique of the budget, also argued that the government had time and again demonstrated that it didn’t require allies.
She wished that talks with them did not give any concrete outcome and asked the government to look deep within and realize that if it wished to cooperate with the allies, then it should do so with sincerity and whole heartedly rather than giving lip service.
Senator Marri expressed concern over the agriculture industry, saying, “We’ve heard since childhood that ours is an agro-based economy and that agriculture is its backbone, but this budget has broken that backbone.”
Neither there are incentives for the farmers nor there is a long-term strategy to enhance the yield of crops, which is constantly decreasing.”
