LAHORE, Oct 21: “The Punjab government will soon set up a commission to update all its old laws,” claimed Law Minister Muhammad Basharat Raja here on Friday.
Responding to a question during the Question Hour in the Punjab Assembly, the minister said that the prime minister had directed all provinces to update their laws according to modern needs.
The Punjab government would establish a cell for this purpose in the next three months. It was, he said, hard to say when the putative cell would finish its recommendations. All departments would also be asked to identify their needs.
Pointing to police rules, he said that most of these were drafted in 1865, as were other criminal and civil laws. All of them should be revised immediately. The government has felt the need and would soon move in that direction, the minister said.
Rana Aftab Ahmad Khan of the opposition was of the view that the standing committees of the house should be entrusted with the job of legal reforms. By doing so, he said, not only the house committees would become more active but members’ objections would also be removed.
Answering a question about the food given to prisoners in the province, Raja Basharat said that the Jails Reforms Committee had already suggested some improvements in the manual and the diet chart of the prisons. Speaking on a point of order, Jails Minister Saeed Akbar Khan Niwani said that the Jails Reforms Committee had already finished its work and its recommendations had been implemented.
Responding to another question, Mr Niwani said that overcrowding in jails was a problem and that the government was well aware of it. “The government has decided to complete and renovate jails at all district headquarters,” he revealed.
Quoting example of the Kot Lakhpat Jail, Lahore, he said that two barracks had already been completed there. Another two high-security barracks were under construction and so were the prison’s 32 cells. The budget for jails has been increased by Rs150 million.
At this point, the speaker asked the minister to ensure installation of telephones in prisons. Officials routinely fleece prisoners, charging up to Rs100 for a call. The minister assured the speaker that his orders would be complied with.
The minister said the government had taken a number of steps to control corruption, which, he conceded, still existed among the prison staff. He said that all-out efforts were being made to make prisons corruption-free, and hoped to get results soon. On a point of personal explanation, Mr Niwani said that he had never been involved in corruption despite being member of the cabinet more than once.
To a proposal by Arshad Baggu of the opposition, he supported the idea of constructing prisons close to courts for security reasons, and said the government had already changed designs of two prisons accordingly.
Answering another question about stolen vehicles, Raja Basharat said that lack of cooperation from the NWFP police was hindering efforts to recover stolen vehicles from tribal areas and other parts of frontier.
He said that better inter-provincial coordination could help improve recovery of stolen vehicles, especially from FATA. He said that 607 cars and 1,339 motorcycles were stolen or snatched in Lahore during the year 2002, of them 197 cars and 333 motorcycles had been recovered.
He said the police had established check posts at the exit points of the city to curb stolen vehicles’ movement.