F.P. Report
ISLAMABAD: Punjab government is set to reduce the working hours of provincial police to eight hours each, improve human resource efficiency and operational autonomy, spokesman to Punjab Chief Minister Usman Saeed Basra said.
He said the Buzdar government has allocated Rs 500 million for improving police structure especially human resource efficiency to purge it from political influence.
He said Rs13 billion would be spent on the uplift of dolphin force in Punjab. He said market committee heads have been tasked to control price hike in collaboration with local administration.
“The delay in the appointment of market committee heads contributed in aggravating price hike situation”, he said.
Media was badly used in recent artificial flour crisis. Overall moral decline also contributed in flour crisis, he commented.
An effective mechanism to distribute flour quota distribution among flour mills would be started to avoid exploitation of the facility, he informed.
“Government was giving Rs 309 billion subsidy on agriculture”, he said adding, orange line train is white elephant.
Punjab government would have to pay Rs 30 billion per annum subsidy to keep the orange train moving, Basra said.
Punjab government has reduced education budget but improved the efficiency.
Earlier, Rs six to Rs seven billion were being spent on teachers’ transfers and now this money is saved by introducing e-transfer system. Primary education is also being overhauled, the spokesman said.
He said 33 per cent budget would be spent on the uplift of South Punjab.
Former Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had utilised only 17 percent of total budget in a financial year, he said adding, whereas Buzdar government has spent 78 percent of total allocated amount during the last financial year.
To a question, he said Prime Minister Imran Khan did not believe on forging any deal with anyone including Nawaz Sharif.
All available options including arrest through interpol would be utilised to bring back former Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif.
Nawaz’s consultants had failed to justify his stay. Rejection to extend bail has negated deal rumours and no body including Nawaz Sharif is above the law.
Responding to another question, he said media houses should stand on their own feet by generating own income. In developed countries, no government pay any funds to any media house.
Over 10 billion trees would be planted in the country in next five years under clean and green Pakistan programme, he said.
