KARACHI: The Sindh government approved on Tuesday the poverty reduction strategy to start rural and urban poverty reduction programme all over the province. Under the programme, Rs72.5 billion will be invested in education, health, water, sanitation and development of internal village roads during the next five years.

This decision was taken by the cabinet meeting presided over by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah at the New Sindh Secretariat here on Tuesday. The meeting was attended by all the provincial ministers, advisers and special assistants.

The strategy was prepared by the planning and development department with EU assistance after a two-year survey and study under which poverty would be reduced by upgrading villages, giving them internal roads, water supply and drainage schemes, health facilities, vocational training and a holistic approach to improving quality of education.

The chief minister said this would be in addition to the already launched poverty reduction programmes and initiatives.

Newly inducted ministers given portfolios

Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho informed the cabinet that with the assistance of the German Development Bank four modern regional blood centres (RBCs) had been constructed in Sukkur, Jamshoro, Shaheed Benazirabad and Karachi. She said that as the health department had no prior experience of managing the sophisticated blood centres, the centres might be contracted out to an experienced private sector organisation under the PPP mode. The cabinet after a formal representation, approved contracting out the RBC Jamshoro to the Indus Hospital, RBC Sukkur to the Sukkur Blood and Drug Donating Society, RBC Shaheed Benazirabad to the Fatimid Foundation and RBC Karachi to the Ziauddin Hospital.

The cabinet also approved the action plan prepared in the light of Supreme Court judgement by the public health engineering department (PHED) for transferring all the functions relating to water, sewerage schemes, including installation, operation and management of RO plants to the department, including all the relevant staff of local government. Under the plan 1,572 schemes would be operated and the salaries of the staff would come to Rs642 million. The cabinet also approved Rs500m for transaction and placed it at the disposal of the PHED secretary.

Additional Chief Secretary Sohail Akbar Shah said that productive forests include irrigated plantation spread over 0.800 million acres. Similarly, protective forests, which include mangroves and rangelands, cover 2.5 million acres. In this way our forests spread over 3.3m acres, which constitute eight per cent of the total land area of Sindh.

The chief minister told the cabinet that the provincial government had received an email from Guinness World Records for establishing a record of planting mangroves.

The chief minister taking serious note of using government number plates by some people on private/unregistered vehicles, ordered launch of a drive against them.

The Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority proposed some 30 amendments to their rules. The chief minister constituted a committee under Adviser on Law Murtaza Wahab along with other officials to review the amendments.

The cabinet approved the bill submitted by the women development department called the ‘Sindh Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2018’ to address the issue of harassment at workplace through legal framework and directed the adviser on law to go through its clauses and send it to the assembly for approval.

ATC judge appointment

The Sindh cabinet on the recommendation of the Sindh High Court chief justice approved the appointment of Munir Ahmed Khawaja, a retired district and sessions judge, as a judge of the Anti-Terrorism Court, Shaheed Benazirabad.

Answering a question after the briefing of the cabinet decisions, Chief Minister’s Adviser on Information Murtaza Wahab brushed aside the impression of non-cooperation with the JIT constituted to probe money laundering. He said the record they had asked for was provided to them. At present, they have sought record of the last 10 years. “The provincial government was collecting the record and it would be in volumes and as soon as it is collected, it would be handed over to the JIT.

Ministers get portfolios

The Sindh chief minister has allocated portfolios to the four new ministers who were inducted in the Sindh cabinet on Monday. According to a notification, besides allocation of departments to the new members of the cabinet with readjustment in some portfolios of the old ministers, Syed Murad Ali Shah had also appointed six special assistants. They are Waqar Mehdi, Rashid Rabbani, Ashfaq Memon, Qasim Nabi, Nawab Wassan and Khatumal while Adviser to Chief Minister Mohammad Bux Mahar had been allocated portfolio of youth affairs.

The newly inducted ministers’ portfolios are: Taimur Talpur, minister for information, science, technology, environment, climate change and coastal development; Awais Qadir Shah, minister for transport and mass transit; Ghulam Murtaza Baloch, minister for labour and human resources; Abdul Bari Pitafi, minister for livestock and fisheries; Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, currently minister for works and services, was given additional charge of religious affairs and prisons; Hari Ram, minister for minorities affairs and social welfare, would also look after the food department while Mukesh Kumar Chawla, in addition to excise and taxation, will also hold additional charge for parliamentary affairs.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2018