Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Legislators in the Upper House of parliament on Monday adopted a resolution urging the government to demand financial compensation from the US on account of lives lost and damages done to the properties of innocent citizens of Pakistan as a result of drone attacks inside the territorial limits of the country since 2000.

The Senators urged the government to send copies of the resolution adopted by the House to the UN General Assembly, NATO, EU, Commonwealth and Asian Parliamentary Assembly in order to highlight impact of drone attacks on the social, economic and psychological conditions of the victims.

Ruling PML-N Senator Javed Abbasi presented the resolution which was adopted unanimously.

In another resolution, the government was urged to lay all international conventions, treaties, covenants, commitments and agreements signed or ratified by the government of Pakistan before both parliament.

The third resolution recommended that the government should facilitate all those persons who left Pakistan at the time of partition or after that and are settled in other countries in case they want to visit their motherland for religious or tourism purposes or they want to make investment or engage in some trade and business activities in the country. The fourth resolution urged the government to ban sale of carbonated and energy drinks in all educational institutions controlled by the federal government.

Over a deferred motion, Senator Mohsin Aziz said Pakistan’s industrial sector was becoming unviable and uncompetitive in the international market due to which the country was becoming a trading rather than a producing country. He claimed that the input cost was so high that majority of industrial unites have either been shut down or become less competitive as compared to even imported products.

Taking part in the discussion, Senator Farhatullah Babar called for a gradual and planned shift of businesses and commercial activities from the military to private sector to make indigenous industry viable and economical.

He proposed curtailing military’s business activities to projects in defense and weapons only. He said that Senate recently learnt that there were more than 50 military business enterprises in the country ranging from cement, fertilizer and sugar production to banking to real estate to aviation to bakery products to literally everything under the sun. But answers to critical questions like contracts awarded without bids and loans written off were not available, he said. Many of country’s largest corporations worth billions were controlled by the security establishment involved in literally every industrial activity, he said. “Senate has recently learnt that there was also Askari Airlines although the minister said he was not aware if it also was part of the Askari business conglomerate,” he said. Discrimination against local industry and private entrepreneurs and the absence of a level playing field was a factor impeding industrial progress in the country, he added. Three bills were introduced in Senate on Monday, which are: “The Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2017”, “The Area Study Centers (Amendment) Bill, 2017,” and “The Police (Amendment) Bill, 2017.”

The House referred “The Islamabad Restriction on Employment of Children Bill, 2017” and “The Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2017 bills to the committees concerned.

The senators lamented high power tariff especially from IPPs. They claimed that such IPPs were also installed in neighboring countries but their tariff was very low as compared to Pakistan. However, Minister for Power Owais Leghari told the House that the government had offered competitive bidding for all power generation companies and totally finished the upfront tariff regime.

Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani informed the House that Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa would appear in Committee as a Whole of the Senate on Tuesday. He said the army chief would brief the lawmakers about the national security situation of the country, his recent foreign visits and the regional security.

The in-camera meeting of the committee of the house was organized on the motion moved by Leader of the House and PML-N Senator Raja Zafarul Haq to prepare policy guidelines for future regional challenges and the role of the United States.

Published in Daily Times, December 19^th 2017.