ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has rejected a Capital Development Authority (CDA) proposed housing scheme on 1,400 acres of land in Chak Shahzad, currently being used by the country’s apex agricultural research centre.

Officials, scientists and staff of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) and National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) gathered at a ceremony on Wednesday and lauded the prime minister’s decision as a positive step towards protecting the future of agriculture in the country.

Speaking at the ceremony, PARC Chairman Yusuf Zafar urged the government to focus on the improvement of agriculture to meet the new challenge of food shortage in the country.

He said that the agricultural scientists will leave no stone unturned to develop the country’s agriculture sector and added that farmers had been benefitting from NARC’s research. While 70pc of the country’s population relies on agriculture, successive governments have not been attaching any importance to agricultural research and the budget allocated to it is also insufficient, he said.

According to official documents submitted to the Senate Standing Committee on National Food Security and Research, the CDA chairman had laid the summary proposing the housing scheme before the prime minister in March 2015.

The summary had been pending with the Prime Minister’s Office since then and no decision was taken as long as Nawaz Sharif was in charge. However, Prime Minister Abbasi took up the issue and rejected the proposal.

Following the submission of the summary, the food security ministry approached the premier to turn down the CDA’s proposal which, according to PARC, was undermining a federal government research institution of national and international repute that had developed over a span of four decades.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2017