PESHAWA R: Around half of the questions placed on the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly`s agenda in the recently ended parliamentary year lapsed mostly due to the absence of their movers in the house.

In the assembly`s second parliamentary year, which ended on May 28, 2015, a total of 423 questions of lawmakers along with their replies put on the assembly agenda.

Of them, 227 were replied on the noor of the house, while the rest totaling 196 lapsed.

Of the lapsed questions, 158 lapsed due to the absence of movers, while others couldn`t be discussed by the house due to the prorogation of the session, revealed the official documents available with Dawn.

The assembly secretariat had received 826 questions submitted by MPAs and 698 of them were admitted for reply by the relevant departments.

Replies to the remaining questions have yet to be submitted.

The number of questions replied decreased from 244 in the 2014 parliamentary year to 227 in the next year.

Last year, 1,323 of the 1787 questions lapse d, which were 74 percent of the total.

The house referred 35 of the total 227 questions replied to the relevant standing committees for detailed discussion, while 17 were deferred or remained pending.

The process of submitting a question to the assembly secretariat and getting its reply from the relevant government department often takes months. The preparation of replies costs thousands of rupees paid from the national exchequer.

Hundreds of their copies are made for distribution among lawmakers and journalists.

Besides, a lot of time is also spent by the respective departments for preparing replies.

However, the taxpayers money and time of the government departments proved a futile exercise when the relevant questions` replies go unheard.

Of the total 698 questions admitted by the assembly secretariat, 102 are about elementary and secondary education, 66 health, 62 home and tribal affairs, 59 local government, 44 communication and works, 39 public health engineering, 38 agriculture, livestock and cooperation, 38 higher education, 24 environment, 27 irrigation, 20 administration and 16 finance.

When contacted, Awami National Party MPA Syed Jafar Shah said lawmakers went to the assembly to discuss the people`s problems and pressured the government to resolve them.

`The lapsing of questions is a very serious issue because through such questions, every lawmaker pinpoints weaknesses and flaws in government departments and injustices meted out to the people,` he said.

The MPA said lawmakersshould also show responsibility and ensure their presencein the house on the day when their questions were on the assembly agenda.

`Millions of rupees and efforts of the relevant departments are utilised in preparation of replies so it should not be wasted and the questions on agenda discussed in any way,` he said.

To avoid lapsing of questions, Shah said he had moved a motion on the floor of the house to extend the question hour from one hour to one and a half hours so that more and more questions could be discussed.

He also said he had suggested in the same motion that once a question was submitted to the assembly secretariat and replayed by the department, then it should not be lapsed.

The MPA said both his suggestions were turned down by the government.

The legislators from treasury and opposition benches have lost interest in the assembly proceedings as the current session has become the longestin history.It has been continuing for more than eight months.

Convened on October 23, 2014, the current session has entered its ninth month.

Till the end of May, prior to the unveiling of the budgetfornexthscalandits passage, many sittings were adjourned in the first five to 10 minutes due to lack of quorum without discussing a single agenda item.