ISLAMABAD: The upper house of the Parliament was told on Tuesday that National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) is being provided budget as per its requirements to deal with the security-related challenges.
During the question hour in the Senate, Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry said that NACTA’s budget has not been cut but increased manifolds over the last few years. He said that the budget estimate of Rs1.528 billion was submitted to the Finance Division for the current financial year in respect of NACTA.
“An amount of Rs143 million has already been allocated while the remaining Rs1385.70 million will be released as and when demanded by the counter-terrorism authority,” he added.
Talal Chaudhry informed the Senate that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) have cancelled the registration of some seminaries for various reasons, including their involvement in anti-state activities.
Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique told the house that the earnings of Pakistan Railways had increased from Rs18 billion to over Rs40 billion over the last few years. He said that the up-gradation of Mainline-1 and construction of dry port and cargo handling facility had been included as early harvest projects under China Economic Pakistan Corridor (CPEC).
The minister said that preparatory work on these projects has been initiated on a fast track basis.
He also said that up-gradation of Mainline-2 and Mainline-3, and the establishment of new lines for linking Gwadar and Khunjerab has also been planned. He added that the project for computerisation of railways’ land record is near completion, which will ensure to safeguard the railway land through a computerised monitoring system.
