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ISLAMABAD, Sept 13: The National Assembly was informed here on Monday that the housing ministry allotted government accommodation to non-entitled officials in the federal capital on the directives of President Gen Pervez Musharraf and former prime ministers Zafarullah Khan Jamali and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.
The details of allotment to non-entitled employees during the last five years were placed before the House by the minister for housing and works, Syed Safwanullah, in response to a question by MNA Dr Sahibzada Abul Khair Muhammad Zubair.
According to the list, President Gen Pervez Musharraf in his capacity as chief executive of the country till 2002 allotted government accommodation to four non-entitled employees, which included two deputy commissioners, Hamid Ali Khan and Tariq Mehmood Khan, and one house to 408 Intelligence Battalion.
The record placed before the National Assembly showed that as chief executive, Gen Pervez Musharraf allotted House No: 11-A, Street 31, F-8/1 to 408 Intelligence Battalion on February 22, 2002.
The record showed that former prime minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali allotted government accommodation to 18 non-entitled employees. Former prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain also allotted government accommodation to a non-entitled employee on June 28 this year.
The housing ministry informed the National Assembly that two non-entitled employees were given government accommodation on the directives of the Wafaqi Mohatasib as well.
In response to another question by Dr Sahibzada Abul Khair Muhammad Zubair, the minister for housing and works informed the House that Chummary Lodges had incurred a loss of Rs5.5 million during the last three years.
The details provided to the National Assembly by the minister showed that during the last three years, only Rs0.992 million were received as room rent for the Chummary Lodges. However, the expenditure on electricity of the lodges during the last three years was Rs1.92 million while Rs4.578 million were spent on salary of the employees.
EDUCATION: The minister for education, Lt-Gen (retired) Javed Ashraf Qazi said the foreign donor agencies had given financial assistance amounting to Rs563 million to Pakistan during the last four years.
In reply to a question from the opposition benches, Lt-Gen (retired) Qazi said three times more allocations to the Higher Education Commission as compared to the entire education ministry was an imbalance but it was necessitated by special circumstances to improve the higher education system in the country.
The minister said the allocation of Rs9 billion to HEC in the budget as compared Rs3 billion to the Ministry of Education was meant to promote the higher education in the country. The minister said the government would try to remove the imbalance in future.
WAPDA: Replying to questions related to the Wapda, parliamentary secretary for water and power, Shahzadi Umar Tiwana, said the government had plans to announce a special package to provide more relief to farmers in electricity bills on agriculture tubewells.
She said the Wapda was not giving free of cost electricity to any consumer except a few concessions to mosques and other places of worship. She said the places of worship were also exempt from levy of electricity duty levied on energy charges at the rate of six per cent in Sindh, seven per cent in the Punjab and Balochistan and eight per cent in NWFP.
However, she maintained that the concessions mentioned above are not applicable to Deeni Madaris except those forming part of mosques. To another question, the parliamentary secretary said the TV licence fee was included in electricity bills of few mosques during July 2004 by mistake.
She said the TV licence fee had now been excluded from such bills and classification code was allotted for mosques in order to exclude the TV licence fee from the energy bills of such connections in future.
