HYDERABAD, Nov 19: The Hyderabad district council here on Tuesday demanded that the Pakistan Telecommunications Company must reduce domestic call charges and line rent by 50 per cent.
By adopting a resolution, it also demanded that the domestic calls should be allowed to have no time limit.
Tabling the resolution, Mohammad Yousuf Qureshi said that since the PTCL had earned the profit of Rs19.8 billion last year and collected the revenue of Rs66.4 billion in 2002. Of these revenue figures, 47.3 billion rupees were collected from domestic subscribers yet the PTCL had failed to give any benefit to them, he said.
Syed Khuda Dino Shah, in another resolution, urged the Sindh government to allow the setting up of pastures for wildlife as the Punjab government had done.
He said that due to water shortage, big blocks of land were lying barren in Sindh and if pastures were set up there, it would provide an alternate source of income to landowners.
He pointed out that such pastures had been established in Africa, America and Europe to protecting different breeds of animals.
The session also adopted the report of the minority committee, presented by minority councillor M. Parkash.
The report called for observing parity in distribution of development funds to the minority members, as they had to look after the minority areas of the entire district.
It appealed the district government to move the Evacuee Trust Property to reduce the rent of the Auqaf properties.
The report recommended that the application of President, Rama Pir temple, Tando Allahyar, should be sent to the ministry of minority affairs for allocation of funds for repair of the temple, and a community centre should be constructed for the disciples at the shrine of Oderolal.
The council also adopted the resolution of Yousuf Qureshi, which called for making it mandatory that only syllabus of the Sindh Text Book Board be taught in the government and private educational institutions.
He maintained that private institutions could adopt a different mode of education according to their requirements but the syllabus should be the same.
He said that in Punjab from next April, English would be made a compulsory subject in primary schools and only books of Punjab Text Book Board would be taught. He demanded that the same pattern should be adopted in Sindh.
Q. Muhammad Hakim, who runs a private school, agreed that the syllabus in private and government educational institutions should be the same, though the books may be different.
