Daily Times

The National Assembly (NA) Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf on Monday stressed the need to enhance the performance capacity of Pakistan Institute of Parliamentary Services (PIPS) and its role to support legislators and their supporting staff.

He expressed these views while presiding over the meeting of Board of Governors of PIPS in Islamabad. He said, “PIPS as an organization has evolved over the years as supportive organisation for federal and provincial parliaments yet there is need to improve its work.”

He stressed on the need to keep on updating the PIPS on modern ways so that it could achieve its organizational goals.

The speaker expressed the hope that PIPS would follow the directions of members of Board of Governors as they are experienced and seasoned parliamentarians. He sought the suggestions of all members of Board of Governors to enhance organizational capacity of PIPS. As per the suggestion of members of Board of Governors, president Board of Governors PIPS speaker constituted an executive committee to outline attainable goals of PIPS. He also recommended to form an advisory committee to enhance the performance of PIPS. The speaker also stressed on the need to gear up the plan for establishment of PTV Parliament.

The matters pertaining to establishment of PTV Parliament, parliamentary study programmes conducted by PIPS. Members Board of Governors stressed on the need to enhance collaboration with public universities to make young generation aware of parliamentary procedures and its importance.

Responding to briefing regarding Developing E-Portal for Members Parliamentary, the members said mobile friendly website be developed so that members can be informed timely. Young Parliamentary subject expert programme, legislative council of experts constituted by PIPS, Rationale for creating new posts, establishment of Parliamentarians Resource Centre (PRCs) at provincial parliament were other matters which were deliberated in committee meeting. The members expressed their displeasure over the allocation of non-Research staff at Parliament centres.

The members Board of Governors also stressed on the need to review the performance targets of PIPS. They also sought details of memorandum of understandings signed by PIPS.

Senate Deputy Chairman Mirza Muhammad Afridi appreciated the performance of PIPS and stressed on the need to support PIPS staff so that PIPS can perform better.

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb expressed dismay over the lack of research based input for capacity building of parliaments. She also stressed to make PIPS as an effective tool to assist federal and provincial legislatures.

Meanwhile, Minister for States and Frontier Regions Talha Mahmood said that the registration DRIVE (Documentation Renewal and Information Verification Exercise) for unregistered Afghan refugees in the country has been extended up to December 31, 2022.

Responding to a question of Shamim Ara Panwar in National Assembly during question hour, Parliamentary Secretary for Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Syed Agha Rafiullah said the drive exercise will ensure to compile complete data of registered and unregistered Afghan refugees as well as those, who have gone back to Afghanistan.

He said as many as 1,282,963 registered Afghan refugees residing in the country have been already been verified under the DRIVE exercise. He said additionally 136,490 undocumented members of registered families have also been documented whose confirmation is in process. If they are found eligible under prescribed criteria, the number of registered Afghan refugees would increase further.