Despite slogans of austerity and claims of bringing an end to Pakistan’s VIP culture, ministers of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government have installed biometric machines outside bathrooms of the Ministry of Industries and Production for top-ranking officers. The ministry comes under Abdul Razak Dawood who is Adviser to Prime Minister Imran Khan for Commerce, Textile, Industry and Production, and Investment of Pakistan.
According to reports, only an additional secretary or an officer above the rank can use these ‘VVIP’ bathrooms. Those who are of the same rank from another ministry can also use these washrooms.
Meanwhile, the bathrooms for the rest of the people working there allegedly don’t even have soaps or other basic toiletries.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government has opposed the formation of a committee to investigate the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) has reported.
As per the details, treasury members of the KP Assembly have
opposed the opposition’s proposed suggestion to form a house committee to probe
the long-pending project.
The chair, however, has admitted the question for a full
debate under Rule 48 of Assembly Procedure, reports said.
“The government would not form a parliamentary
committee unless it was aimed to facilitate people and provide them
relief,” KP Law Minister Sultan Khan said on the floor of the provincial
assembly during question hour.
He rejected the allegations of corruption in BRT and said
that public funds had been utilised on the project in a “judicious and
transparent” way.
The minister was responding to a question raised by Pakistan
People’s Party (PPP) legislator Nighat Orakzai, who argued that public money
had been “deliberately misused” in the project.
According to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report released
earlier this month, the KP government significantly deviated from the original,
agreed design and used inferior quality material in the Rs70 billion Peshawar
metro bus project putting lives and assets at risk in the process.
The inferior quality construction could damage the project’s reputation at the international level, warned the lender that had approved a $335 million (Rs53 billion) loan for the project in mid-2017.
PESHAWAR METRO:
The Peshawar metro is rather infamous for its incompletion as
the authorities concerned have failed to meet deadlines time and again. The government
has now issued yet another deadline for completion of the much-delayed project,
saying that it will be operational by the end of current year.
The KP government and the project’s execution agency had earlier promised to open the project, launched in October 2017, within six months on April 20, 2018. However, the deadline was missed.
The project managers kept changing the launch dates from May
20 to June 30 to December 31 in 2018 to March 23, 2019. The project’s cost has
also jumped to Rs68 billion from earlier Rs49 billion.
In another episode of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) alleged bars on press freedom, critical media coverage has been linked to potential “treason”.
The PTI, on its official Twitter handle, has fired off over two dozen tweets in English and Urdu, lambasting the press for coverage that criticises the government and Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan, which it deemed “anti-state”.
“Freedom of expression is [the] beauty of democracy. Expressing [the] enemy’s stance is not freedom of speech, but treason against its people,” read one tweet.
Media houses & journalists must take care that in their quest for criticism on State, they intentionally or unintentionally do not end up propagating enemy’s stance. Freedom of expression is immense power. And with great power there is great responsibility!#JournalismNotAgendapic.twitter.com/YdxD9Al5Pb
“Media houses and journalists must take care that in their quest for criticism on state, they intentionally or unintentionally do not end up propagating enemy’s stance,” it added with the hashtag ‘#JournalismNotAgenda’.
The tirade comes two weeks after an interview of former president Asif Ali Zardari was stopped from being aired shortly after it started on a private news channel.
I can only say sorry to my viewers that an interview was started and stopped on Geo New I will share the details soon but it’s easy to understand who stopped it?We are not living in a free country
It was followed by an interview of Maryam Nawaz Sharif, a vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), being “forcefully” taken off air soon after it was run.
“Just came to know Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s interview has been stopped forcefully just [a] few minutes after it started live,” tweeted show host Nadeem Malik.
Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI) leader Sohail Zafar was showered with foreign currency notes as he reached his hometown on Sunday.
According to reports, the leader was welcomed with euros, United States (US) dollars and riyals besides Rs5,000 currency notes by the party’s local leadership in Gujranwala, over his appointment as Punjab Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) chairman.
WATCH VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs6TfGVxoNI
It was Zafar’s maiden visit to his hometown since the appointment by PTDC Board of Directors last month.
Cheema’s caravan entered the boundary of his hometown Machike Sandhuan when PTI leader Shahid Iqbal Naghra showered him with foreign currencies, whereas the party members received him by dancing and tossing flower petals, reports said.
Party workers were also reported to be collecting the currency notes on the ground as was seen in the video that went viral on social media.
Mir Iftikhar Ahmed Khan Lund, who allegedly violated his poor driver by inserting an iron rod into his rectum, has been appointed as a human rights focal person by the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
According to a Human Rights Ministry notification dated July 10, Minister Shireen Mazari has appointed Lund as a focal person on the issues of human rights in Sindh.
“He shall assist the office of the federal minister on the issues of human rights while keeping liaison with relevant stakeholders,” the notification read.
While the appointment is “purely voluntary without the ministry bearing any expenses”, the news has taken social media by storm owing to the gross violation allegedly committed by Lund in April.
Lawyer and activist Mohammad Jibran Nasir was among the first to point out.
As per the details, a van driver named Allah Rakhio was allegedly assaulted and meted out inhumane punishment in Sindh’s Ghotki district on the orders of his employer, Lund, and his three relatives.
According to the victim’s son, Zahid Hussain Rakhio, his father had a disagreement with Shafiq Lund, following which he was called to Iftikhar’s residence where he was mercilessly beaten up by Shafiq, Rafiq Lund and Mumtaz Ali Lund in Iftikhar’s presence.
Injured Rakhio called Hussain, who took him to the hospital, where he received eight stitches on his private parts. A video of Rakhio lying on his back on a stretcher and narrating his ordeal was also widely shared over the internet.
FIR AGAINST LUND:
A First Information Report (FIR) against Iftikhar, Mumtaz, Shafiq and Rafiq on the victim’s complaint was filed at the Khanpur Mahar police station.
The FIR was filed under sections 324 (attempt to commit qatle amd), 355 (assault or criminal force with intent to dishonour a person), 147 (punishment for rioting) and 143 (punishment for being a member of unlawful assembly).
Hussain, however, claims that police have not yet made any arrests and are trying to brush the incident under the carpet.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MPA Shahina Karim on Wednesday submitted in the Punjab Assembly a resolution to safeguard the rights of transgender children, ARY News reported.
“Most of the times during childbirth, the kid is not transgender, but is presumed so,” the resolution read.
“Such a child can be assigned gender after corrective surgery and appropriate measures so that they too can spend life like a man or a woman,” the resolution stated further.
The move comes amid rising numbers of transgender persons’ killings across the country. Just last week, a 19-year-old transgender woman was found “riddled with bullets” beside a river bank.
The teenager’s father and uncle were arrested for her murder.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has retired record foreign loans worth $9.5 billion during the current fiscal year, which according to Minister of State for Revenue Hammad Azhar, had never been done by any government in a single year.
On point of personal explanation in the National Assembly, Azhar said that during the first year of PTI government, external debts increased by $2.7 billion whereas, in the last year of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government, foreign loans surged by over $7 billion.
WATCH VIDEO:
حکومت پاکستان نے اس سال ریکارڈ 9.5 ارب ڈالر قرض واپس کیا یے – حماد اظہر https://t.co/NhgurEZ3XS
Responding to the opposition’s claim of obtaining domestic loans worth Rs7,000 billion or Rs 10,000 billion during PTI’s first year in power, he further said the figures were highly exaggerated.
The minister added that previous governments were responsible for the current economic situation of the country, while the Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan-led government was taking the economy towards stability.
Soon after Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Accountability Shahzad Akbar said the British government has agreed to extradite Ishaq Dar, it was reported that the former finance minister had approached Home Office in London “to apply for political asylum”.
Dar, 69, is currently in London, “undergoing medical treatment”. He is absconding from several cases in Pakistan since 2017 and has been declared a proclaimed offender by the courts.
He is facing charges of accumulating assets beyond known sources of income.
With the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government continuing to claim Dar is only evading the cases against him since he has been spotted walking upright on the streets of London time and again, PM Imran Khan’s special assistant on Tuesday said the former finance minister “will be brought back soon”.
A day later, a private media outlet claimed that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader had reached the Home Office in London for a second interview with regard to political asylum in the United Kingdom (UK).
Rejecting the reports, a close aide of Dar told The Current that he had visited the UK Home Office “only to inform them about the fabricated reports in the name of a recently-signed extradition agreement between the two countries”.
The source’s claim was validated when British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the United Kingdom (UK) would not sign any extradition treaty that could be used for “politically-motivated” cases.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Foreign Minister (FM) Shah Mahmood Qureshi at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Hunt confirmed the two had discussed the issue of an extradition treaty between Pakistan and the UK.
WATCH VIDEO:
“Let me say it straightforward. The UK will never sign any treaty allowing for politically motivated extradition,” said the British official to which Qureshi added that Pakistan did not intend to use the treaty against political rivals.
Senior journalist Hamid Mir has trolled Federal Minister for Water Resources Faisal Vawda for claiming that “anti-Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)” media houses had started liking the government after financial benefits.
Speaking on Mir’s show, Vawda on Tuesday said that media outlets, known for their alleged affiliation with opposition parties, were now highlighting achievements of the PTI government as they had been “provided with ease of doing business”.
“It wasn’t our job, but we fought against lay-offs in the media industry. We made doing businesses easy by giving them [media houses] budgets,” he said.
When Mir asked if he meant the government had paid media houses any money, Vawda agreed, saying the PTI had “paid them against government advertisements”.
It wasn’t later that both Mir and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Khurram Dastgir Khan broke into laughter.
WATCH VIDEO:
Senior journalists have time and again expressed concerns over the state of Pakistani media ever since the PTI government took reins of the country.
With cuts in government advertisements, a shakeout has been triggered and hundreds of thousands of media workers have gone jobless. Some journalists have also accused the PTI of using “stoppage of government ads to media as a weapon”.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government on Tuesday announced its first federal budget for the fiscal year 2019-20, which received mixed reactions from people.
It was presented by Federal Minister for Revenue Hammad Azhar, who delivered his speech while opposition members protested against Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan and his government.
Amid all the confusion over the increase in prices of different products, which may follow the budget, here is a list of stuff The Current suggests you stock up on before an inflation bomb is dropped.
Rooh Afza
That was exactly our reaction. But, a new health tax has been proposed on sugary drinks, which will make it costlier to buy sharbat. It’s not just that though…
Soft Drinks
You heard that right. Those little soft drink breaks during summers will be costing you more now as the health tax will also be jacking up soda prices. The excise tax on soft drinks has been increased from 11.25 per cent to 13 per cent, which is not too much, but will ultimately affect you.
The good part? The money will reportedly be used to provide free medical treatment to people using Sehat Cards that offer treatment up to Rs720,000 from a private or government hospital.
Cooking Oil/Ghee
Branded cooking oil and ghee prices will also be rising as a 17 per cent sales tax will be imposed. You must be thinking that it doesn’t really affect you much, but you never know how it may or may not affect food prices.
The good news, however, remains no increase in General Sales Tax (GST) in case you’re planning to dine out.
Sugar
The price of sugar is expected to increase by Rs3.60/kg since the government is unhappy with the tax collection from the sector. The new budget recommends increasing sales tax on sugar from 8 per cent to 17 per cent.
We don’t endorse the next thing you need to stock up on, but let’s be honest, we know a lot of people who smoke.
Cigarettes
The budget has also recommended a federal excise duty of Rs5,200 on every 10,000 cigarettes be imposed, which means every pack of 20 cigarettes you buy will cost you at least Rs10 more.
Just so you know, tobacco consumption kills nearly 160,000 Pakistanis every year, and a lot of people are supporting the move.
