KARACHI: Sindh treasury on Tuesday passed the LG amendment bill on the private members day amidst strong protest by the opposition. According to details, opposition parties strongly protested when Senior Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro tabled a motion to relax the rules to allow him tabling supplementary business. The opposition strongly protested however, the speaker allowed the senior minister to table the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2016 and the House passed it amid the uproar of opposition. Opposition Leader Khawaja Izharul Hassan requested the speaker to count the members present as the number of the opposition members in the House were more than the members of the treasury bench. Nisar Khuhro said in order to avoid corrupt practices and make the election of mayor, deputy mayor, chairman and vice chairman of the council transparent, fair and free, suitable amendments in the Sindh Local Government Act, 2013 are needed. Khawaja Izharul Hassan said that the PPP knows that it could face defeat as they had no confidence in their own members therefore wanted the ‘shows of hands’ instead of the secret ballot. The opposition, including two PTI members, stood on their seats and tore down the copies of the agenda of the day and raised slogans. The speaker adjourned the House after passing the bill. Earlier, PML-F lawmaker Nusrat Bano Seher Abbasi said that the province’s emergency care facilities were available only in Karachi as a result many lives were lost while shifting patients from far-flung areas to the provincial capital so it was necessary that the government provided emergency and trauma care facilities at every district, besides providing air ambulance facilities at the divisional headquarters to provide relief to the general public in case of emergency. Ghazala Siyal, Waqar Hussain Shah, Khuram Sher Zaman, Rafique Bhanbhan, Dilawar Qureshi, Syed Aijaz Shah Bukhari, Mehtab Akbar Rashdi, Zaffar Ahmed Kamali, Sorath Thebo, Aisha Khatoon, Zubair Ahmed Khan and Seema Zia supported the resolution. They said that emergency and rescue services were upgraded in Punjab and other provinces but the Sindh government failed to improve these crucial sectors and added that the government hospitals at district level lacked facilities to treat trauma and emergency patients. “The people of Sindh had already paid a heavy price due to the ill-managed district hospitals,” Nusrat said, adding that presently road ambulances are being run by the Edhi, Aman, Chippa and other philanthropists, while Edhi alone was running an air ambulance service. The members said that the Sindh Health Department should improve its performance as the deaths of children in Thar showed the lack of medical facilities available in government hospitals and that the local doctors should be asked to serve in their native districts. They claimed that the growing roads accidents and terrorism had increased the need of the air ambulance service. The House passed the resolution, unanimously. The House also passed other private resolutions tabled y Naila Munir and Syed Khalid Ahmed of MQM. However, the private resolution of Irum Azeem Farooqui was also unanimously passed after being amended.