ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz Tuesday said the government’s plan to boost construction activity was moving ahead as over 100,000 housing units were being built in different projects.
Addressing a press conference here to give details of the decisions taken in the weekly cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, he said under a government plan, the people were getting loans from banks for the low-cost housing.
On the instructions of the State Bank, he said, the banks had come up with packages for the building of homes and had allocated five percent or Rs 378 billion of their loan portfolio for the purpose. The banks were giving loans on five to seven percent mark-up for the construction of five marla houses and the loan limit was set at Rs 3.5 million.
The Parliament had also passed the foreclosure law to protect such banks’ loans, he added.
The minister said two important projects, including Ravi River front Urban Development Project and the Bundle Islands, were currently underway.
According to a briefing of the Housing Ministry, about 35,700 housing units were being built presently while over 21,000 would be constructed in another six projects.
Shibli Faraz said the government had put in place a mechanism to make it easy for the builders of houses, plazas and shopping malls to get no-objection certificates and maps’ approval.
He said the prime minister took strict notice and condemned in strong words the incident in which a squad of vehicles had broken the red traffic signal in Islamabad and some four persons were killed.
The PM instructed the federal and provincial governments to strictly discourage the use of security and protocol squads on roads which created a culture of fear and impunity.
A mechanism was already in place under which committees recommended bulletproof cars and security staff for vulnerable citizens, he added.
The minister said the problem of land grabbers was also discussed in the meeting and it was informed that operations were continuing against illegal occupiers of state land, including those who had encroached upon railways land.
Railways Minister Azam Swati was working on the issue of railways land and he was further instructed to get recovered the government assets, he added.
Land grabbing had weakened the rule of law and also created a sense of insecurity among the public, especially the overseas Pakistanis, he said, adding it was the responsibility of the government to protect the state assets.
Replying to questions from journalists, the minister said the government strongly believed in the media freedom and none would wish that the channel (media) of communication between the government and public should be disturbed.
He, however, emphasized that he as the minister had never questioned any media outlet about releasing any news report, and had just one request to make that while filing a report, the government’s version should also be incorporated to give it a balanced outlook as it should not be one-sided.
Criticism, he said, helped improve the performance of the government as the media pointed out any weakness in its governance.
About the opposition parties, he said all knew what they were up to as they had their own priorities to focus and were not playing the democratic role of highlighting weaknesses in the governance.
The minister said the government wanted cordial relations with the media as neither the government nor the media would like any bitterness.
To a question, he said the media should ask the opposition as to what happened to their resignations as the January 31 deadline had already passed.
To a query about a section of the road closed for several months near Lal Masjid in Islamabad, Shibli Faraz said there had been a controversy going on for a long time, but matters were being thrashed out and steps taken would be durable and hopefully, within a month or so, there would be good news.
Regarding the constitutional amendment for open ballot voting for the Senate election, the minister said it was the government’s stated position that the Senate polls should be transparent, and he and his colleagues made their way to the House by depositing Rs 25,690 fee. All had seen as how a party with six or seven votes, secured 20 votes in the previous Senate election.
The Senate elections in the past had been marred by the sale and purchase of lawmakers’ votes and the opposition through the Charter of Democracy, had also envisaged ensuring transparency in the Senate polls.
He said the government with that objective had approached the Supreme Court for guidance on that count and one option was the constitutional amendment. The latter would, however, show on which side the opposition stood and it would be exposed if it opposed the constitutional amendment.
The money factor, Shibli argued, also marred the international perception regarding the elected public representatives. The Senate, being the symbol of the Federation, was the forum where the people wanted to come on the basis of money.
The minister said the PTI had the moral justification to push for transparency, as it had sent home 20 of its lawmakers for receiving money for votes.
About the rejection of the recent bill for journalists’ rights, the minister said the opposition parties had opposed it despite the fact that they had representation in the House standing committee concerned, which had approved it. Traditionally, a bill approved by a House committee did not face opposition.
He promised that after having numerical strength in the House, the government would not only again bring such a bill but also do some other legislation for media persons for their rights, pay protection job security, and health cover.
The minister said his ministry had proposed to the government to provide Insaf Health Cards to the journalists as well.
To a question about the price hike of commodities, he said the prices of many items had come down while others, which included mostly imported commodities like cooking oil, tea, pulses, powdered milk, and petroleum products, were witnessing price hike owing to their increase in the world market.
The prime minister, he said, had been holding weekly meetings on inflation and price hike was a temporary phenomenon.
He said point to point reply would be sent to the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) in response to its report Wednesday. There was exaggeration and some things associated with the government were factually not true, he added.
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