PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Friday proposed an amendment to the law regulating local bodies in the province to secure the administrative control of an important department from district governments.

Local government and rural development minister Inayatullah Khan tabled the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government (Third Amendment) Bill 2017 in the house.

If the assembly passes the bill, the district governments will lose the control of the communication and works, district roads and buildings department to the government.

The department was devolved to the respective district governments after the enforcement of the LG Act in 2015.

Earlier, the opposition protested the absence of ministers from the session chaired by deputy speaker Dr Mehar Taj Roghani complaining that the issues raised by them weren`t handledproperly by the government.

The house also had the treasury members in small numbers and those, who were in attendance, used their time gossiping and laughing.

During the question hour, PPP MPA Sanaullah asked the chair about who from the treasury would reply to his questions.

The questions of the opposition members were related to the health and science and technology departments. However, the relevant minister, Shahram Tarakai, was absent from the house.

In a desperate move, the chair directed the assembly`s staff members and an officer of the health department sitting in the officers` gallery to contact the minister to know about his whereabouts.

`Let`s delay the question hour until the minister arrives,` she said.

Sanaullah sarcastically told the chair, `Call a doctor to respond to the questions about the health department if the minister has no time for the assembly.

Mufti Syed Janan of the JUI-F said millions of rupees were spent on a single session of the assembly but the treasury members didn`t take interest in the proceedings.

Speaking on a point of order, he said for the first time, he saw an assembly wait for the min-ister to show up.

`No assembly in the world waits for the minister to come and respond to questions,` he said angrily.

The opposition lawmaker also walked out from the house to protest the `irresponsible` attitude of the government members.

Azazul Mulk Afkari of the Jamaat-i-Islami, a coalition partner in the provincial government, said he had not seen such a non-serious assembly in his political career.

`This assembly has been run non-seriously, he said regretting no one was there to give reply to the questions of the members.

Minister Shahram Tarakal later showed up but by then, the question hour was almost over.

His arrival didn`t stop the members from criticising the treasury benches as the questions replied by the health department were incomplete and were just produced three hours before the session.

The chair asked the health department to submit replies to the assembly secretariat two days before the session as to give proper time to the mover for reading the reply.

Health minister Shahram Tarakai tabled the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Vaccination (Amendment) Bill 2017 and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mental Health Bill 2017.