March 4, 2002	Monday	Zilhaj 19, 1422

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KOHAT, March 3: NWFP Governor Lt-Gen Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah has said that soon judicial complexes will be constructed in all the major districts of the province with the financial assistance of the Asian Development Bank under the Access to Justice Programme.

The bank has promised to provide soft loan to Pakistan for the said purpose after approval of the proposal at the highest level.

Apart from this, President Gen Pervez Musharraf, during his recent visit to Peshawar, had also committed that any shortage of funds in this regard would be fulfilled from the federal funding of the project. He said instead of renovation, it had become necessary to bulldoze all courts constructed before the partition and construct new ones.

Responding to various demands put forward by the lawyers community here at a function held in his honour by the district bar association on Saturday, the governor regretted that the performance of the district governments had been very dismal because out of the total Rs3,000 million funds disbursed to the districts during the last so many months so far only Rs900 million had been utilised, that too only to the extent of preparing schemes.

In Peshawar, a sum of Rs128 million remained unutilised by the district government for unknown reasons whereas the people were still demanding so many things from the government, he added.

He also announced a grant of Rs one million for the district bar to construct a library and make up for their other necessary needs.

He disclosed that Chairman of the Al Shifa Eye Trust, Gen Jehandad had communicated to him that he had planned to construct a big eye hospital in Kohat for which preliminary estimates were being worked out.

Mr Shah also promised to the lawyers community that he would take up the matter of appointing advocate general, additional advocate general and additional prosecutors from amongst the local lawyers with the chief justice of Peshawar High Court.

He said that after the completion of the Kohat tunnel, the distance between Kohat and Peshawar would be further curtailed and most probably with the expansion of both the cities later, the two would become twin cities like Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Therefore, there was no need of establishing a circuit bench of High Court here. This would be the wastage of precious government funds, he remarked.

He explained that the government was not in favour of Basic Health Units which mostly remained deprived of doctors and other staff as well as necessary equipment. Therefore, he added, the government had planned to upgrade the district hospitals, equip them with modern machinery such as CT scan etc, and provide specialist facilities there to the people round the clock.

The function was also addressed by district Nazim, Engineer Malik Asad, former PPP Senator Syed Masud Kausar, secretary general of district bar, Zaheeur Din Babar and attended by a large number of lawyers community belonging to Kohat, Hangu and Karak districts.