The National Assembly was informed Wednesday that the federal government had geared up efforts to recover outstanding electricity bills from the provincial government departments as the circular debt was once again raising its ugly head.
Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali told the House during question hour that directions had been issued to the provincial departments to pay the electricity bills or their connections would be disconnected. He said 100 billion rupees were receivable from the KESC while 50 billion rupees were outstanding against the Sindh government.
To a question, he said a number of steps were being taken – conversion of oil based plants to coal and installation of plants on hydel sources – – to eliminate the issue of circular debt which currently stands at Rs 157 billion rupees.
Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication Anusha Rahman Khan told the House that the Universal Service Fund was only being used to provide telecommunication services in un-served and remote areas. She said the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority was working to launch next year biometric system for issuance of verified SIMs. She said last year a campaign was started to verify the SIMs and under this process 10 million SIMs had been verified.
Minister for Industries and Production Ghulam Murtaza Khan Jatoi said efforts were being made to enhance production capacity of Pakistan Steel Mills from current 12 percent to 80 percent to reduce its losses. He said 26 percent shares of Pakistan Steel Mills would be privatised after getting the 80 percent production target. He said a purification plant was being installed in the Steel Mills to utilise the Iron-ore discovered from Balochistan.
Minister of State for Housing and Works Usman Ibrahim told the House that 25,000 applications had been received for Bhara Kahu housing scheme. An amount of 492 million rupees received from the applicants was lying with the bank, he said, adding work on multi-storey apartment scheme in Sector G-13 would be started after getting NOC from the Capital Development Authority.
To a question, Minister of State for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar informed the House that a policy was under consideration to rationalise the prices of drugs. She said manufacturing of generic drugs was being encouraged as by and large these were cheaper than the branded drugs.
About 76,000 drugs were registered in the country and efforts were underway to grant new licenses to increase the production of drugs.
Regarding prevalence of AIDs cases, the minister of state for health said the number of AIDs patients in the country stood at one hundred thousand and due to the stigma attached with the disease the number of patients registered under the AIDs programme were only 7819.
She said the global fund provided funds for the AIDs programme and 14 community home based centres had been established in the four provinces for the treatment of AIDs patients.
Minister for Religious Affairs Sardar Muhammad Yusuf said religious scholars from all schools of thought were being taken on board to avert incidents of sectarian violence.
