By: Fatima Fayyaz
(Writer is a free lance Lahore based journalist covering social and political issues)
Although the new government led by the first ever female Chief Minister of Punjab has taken off very well, yet, still it has to combat a long series of challenges while handling the largest province of the country.
In its first month, the Maryam Nawaz government in Punjab has focused primarily on setting new records. First, the history was created as never before Punjab had a female CM. In next few days, it has another record in form of the first Sikh Minister ever picked in post partition Punjab cabinet in form of Sardar Ramesh Singh Arora. Besides, Maryam Nawaz has also been quite actively chairing the meeting of Punjab administration with a prime focus on providing the relief to the population of Punjab. Nevertheless, her government still has a lot of distance to cover and things can not go un noticed in this age of social media. Keeping in view the huge size of Punjab and the size of her 18 member cabinet, one thing that has raised several eyebrows amongst the politicians and PMLN voters from Southern belt of Punjab is that she picked only two Ministers out of 18 from a belt which has at least 10 highly populated districts and with seriously high level of challenges concerning people.
The districts of Punjab that are considered a part of Southern belt include Khanewal, Multan, Lodhran, Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Rahim Yar Khan, Layyah, Rajanpur and Muzaffargarh. Out of total 18 Ministers that took oath in Maryam Nawaz cabinet, two including Kazim Pirzada (Bahawalpur) and Sher Ali Gorchani (Rajanpur) have been inducted. On the other hand, only from her own city of Lahore, the Punjab cabinet has 7 Ministers including Bilal Yasin, Mujtaba Shuja ur Rehman, Faisal Ayub, Suhail Shaukat Butt, Uzma Bokhari, Khawaja Imran Nazir and Khawaja Salman Rafique. While the Chief Minister herself belongs to Lahore, picking 7 Ministers only from one district and ignoring almost entire South Punjab will not at all convey a positive message to the population whose prime demand has been to create a separate province. This is quite interesting that from the city of Multan where last PMLN government in Punjab led by Shehbaz Sharif set up a secreteriat named as South Punjab Secretariat, not a single Minister has been picked. This is the city where some big names in national history like former Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, former Chief Minister Punjab Nawab Sadiq Hussein Qureshi, former Governor Sajjad Hussein Qureshi, former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and many others came from. The absence of even a single Minister in Punjab cabinet from the historic city of Multan or Multan division also seems a very strange occurrence. The PMLN government will have to seriously think about it and has to take all required measures to bridge the gap between have and have not. End
