RECORDER REPORT

ISLAMABAD: The different electricity projects including wind, solar, hydro and coal under the CPEC will help to generate a sum of 17,045 megawatts electricity in the country.

Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali informed this to the National Assembly on Friday during the question hour.

He said the CPEC power generation projects are categorized as prioritized and actively promoted projects with a separate generation of 10,400 megawatts and 6,645 megawatts respectively.

“All of these projects are in IPP mode and are being processed by AEDB (wind and solar) and PPIB (coal and hydro projects)”, he told, adding that the government is trying its best to end load shedding in the country by installing new efficient power generation plants.

The minister said that per unit tariff of electricity will also be reduced once the generation from wind, solar, hydro and coal projects start.

To a supplementary question, he said the government is actively working on Diamer-Bhasha Dam and 90 percent of the land for dam has been acquired while physical work on the project will begin next year.

The minister also assured the House that the federal government will make PSDP allocations for the project in the coming budget.

To a question, Minister for Housing and Works Akram Khan Durrani informed the House that a total of 105 inquiries/cases of corruption are pending in different allied departments of the ministry including the Estate Office, Pakistan Housing Authority, Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation and Pakistan Public Works Department.

He said that some of these cases are under trial in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) courts and in civil courts referred by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

The minister said that some of the inquiries are still under way; therefore, responsibility for negligence or crime has not yet been fixed.

All these corruption cases surfaced in previous governments as no case has been registered during the tenure of the current government, he said, adding that his ministry was in contact with the NAB and hopefully all pending cases would be decided within 4 months.

Parliamentary Secretary for National Health Services, Dr Darshan informed the Lower House that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has approved the proposal to construct over 40 state-of-the-art hospitals to provide better health facilities to the people.

These hospitals will be established in densely populated, deprived or marginalized areas of Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), he told.

To another question of Pakistan Peoples Party’s Shazia Marri about the issues of malnutrition and stunting in the country, he said the ministry is playing its role of coordinating, policy and regulation making and oversight effectively.

“Multiple initiatives have been undertaken through the nutrition wing of the ministry in collaboration with the provincial departments of health, UN agencies and development partners as continued nutrition response to prevent and treat malnutrition among most vulnerable, especially the children,” he added.

Dr Darshan said that there is no direct federal government funding for nutrition interventions in the FATA; however, Nutrition PC-I for federal areas was under process in the Planning Commission.