SUKKUR, Oct 29: Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim has said his government is considering to introduce the Panchayat system in the province so that disputes between people and tribes in the rural areas are resolved quickly.
He defended the settlement of tribal disputes through what he called Panchayat committees and said that the Sindh Assembly would also enact a law against honour killing as had been done by the National Assembly.
He was speaking at a press conference at Sukkur airport on Friday before leaving for Karachi after visiting Sukkur and Khairpur districts and inaugurating the annual Urs of multilingual Sufi poet Sachal Sarmast in Daraza.
The chief minister promised to release the grant of Rs.50 million for the Institute of Business Administration, Sukkur, which had been announced by his predecessor Ali Mohammad Mahar.
SUKKUR BARRAGE: He said that an army engineers' team had reached Sukkur for repairing Sukkur Barrage and started the work, adding that the work would be completed in four months before the beginning of next monsoon period at a cost of Rs1 billion.
Dr Rahim added that 85 per cent expenses incurred on the work would be borne by the federal government and 15 per cent by the Sindh government. He said that the work would include construction of a coffer dam for Dadu Canal, after which damage caused to canal gates would be repaired.
The chief minister said that the decision to handover the repair work to the army team had been made at the request of the Sindh government which believed that the provincial irrigation department did not have expertise to undertake the work.
He criticized the irrigation authorities for concealing the facts relating to the damage caused to the barrage for two years. According to him, it was a personal initiative of President Gen Pervez Musharraf to engage the army engineers in the work. The chief minister was accompanied by Sindh Minister for Auqaf and Religions Affairs Manzoor Panhwar and Health Adviser Faisal Malik.
Our Khairpur Correspondent adds: Taking to newsmen in Daraza, Dr Rahim said that the contract for fishing in the Badin waters had been given to Rangers in the tenure of the then chief minister Abdullah Shah.
The chief minister claimed that his government had resolved a dispute over sugarcane crushing in Sindh. About provision of jobs in public sector, he said that there was no quota for rural and urban areas of Sindh but jobs would be given on the basis of merit in those districts where posts were lying vacant.
