“The government is trying hard to provide people uninterrupted power supply during sehr, iftar and taraveeh. However, there will be six hours of load shedding in urban spaces and eight hours of load shedding in rural areas daily during Ramazan,” Minister for Water and Power Chaudhry Abid Sher Ali stated earlier yesterday. He said there was an energy crisis and they were trying hard to control it.
The minister was speaking to journalists at a public gathering at Ghausia Park in Allama Iqbal Colony. “The government led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has been executing power generation projects on war-footing… we are hopeful that the situation will improve next year.”
He said between 8,000 and 10,000 megawatt electricity would be injected into the grid by 2018. “We are striving hard to overcome load shedding completely by March, 2018,” Ali said.
Responding to a question, Ali said the prime minister was abroad for cardiac surgery and would return soon “to work for the welfare and uplift of the masses”.
The minister said that the PML-N had earlier made Pakistan an invincible power. “By building nuclear weapons we have become a force to reckon with.” He said the party would soon transform it into an economic power.
The people of Pakistan have rejected Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan’s politics of agitation and hypocrisy, he said. “Khan has been acting at the behest of his foreign masters… he has failed to initiate any projects of significance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where his political party has formed the government.” Ali said the PTI had also failed to provide safety and security to the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The minister praised late Pakistan Peoples Party leader Benazir Bhutto for her sacrifice to create a democratic country. “However, Bilawal Bhutto is an amateur and should refrain from making controversial statements,” he said.
BISP to launch poverty assessment survey
Speaking at the gathering, Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) Chairperson Marvi Memon said that the PML-N government believed in serving people. “We will conduct a comprehensive survey of families who deserve the BISP grants. We will make arrangements to provide reasonable sustenance to them during our tenure.”
She said that the government’s policy was to reach out to the have-nots and to pull them out of the poverty trap through a transparent process.
She said in the first phase, the BISP would conduct a poverty survey in 16 districts, including Faisalabad. “The criteria for the survey are being chalked out to ensure we provide financial assistance to families who need it the most.”
She said 5.3 million families were registered with the BISP. As many as 170,000 families from Faisalabad division are registered with the BISP, Memon said. “Surveyors will be asked to go door-to-door and conduct biometric identification of people.”
The government had increased funds for the BISP, from Rs40 billion to Rs102 billion, for the financial year 2015-2016, she said. “This amount will increase in the budget for the coming financial year.”
Memon said that she did not think the poverty assessment survey conducted in 2010 was fair. “Too many deserving women were left out of the survey.”
She said the survey would be conducted after Ramazan. A strict monitoring system will be ensured to make the survey reliable and transparent, she said. The monitoring teams will use the latest electronic equipment to avoid omissions or making errors. “This is a noble gesture and it is only possible if the people in charge of the programme perform their duties with honesty and diligence,” she said.
Memon stressed the need for the media, the civil society and local government representatives to ensure strict monitoring of the BISP survey. “We request them to report on and help us identify any discrepancies in conducting the survey. They can report them to a local office or the BISP headquarters.”
The participants of the gathering offered prayers for the early recovery of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is scheduled to undergo a cardiac surgery on Tuesday.
