Daily Times

LAHORE: The Punjab government has approved the establishment of provincial and district level task force under the Human Rights and Minority Affairs Department to help reduce incidents of rape, forced labour, acid throwing, domestic violence, women harassment and honour killing.

Human Rights and Minority Affairs Minister Khalil Tahir Sandhu announced this while addressing a press conference in the committee room of Human Rights Department on Wednesday. He said that with the establishment of such task force at provincial level, there would be a decline in violation of human rights’ incidents.

He said that special steps would be taken in this regard by providing training to provincial and district officers, adding that it was mandatory for federal and provincial government to follow 27 conventions of United Nations to maintain GSP plus status, which includes memorandums of environmental and labour laws, human rights and good governance. He said that task force would take an overview regarding the human right laws in province and could recommend amendments in prevailing laws. He added that before this step, there was no such mechanism available for the Human Rights Department in all districts.

Sandhu informed that 14 provincial secretaries of home, law, education, special education, information and culture departments along with Members Provincial Assembly Ramesh Singh Arora and Merry Gill would be included as members of the task force. Human Rights and Minority Affairs Minister Khalil Tahir Sandhu and Punjab Additional Chief Secretary Shumail Ahmad Khawaja would perform the duties as chairman and deputy chairman respectively, while Human Rights Department secretary would be the secretary of the task force.

Sandhu said that implementation committees of task force would be setup under the chairmanship of concerned district coordination officers and district police officers in which other members would include executive district officers, two MPAs and a member of the civil society.

He said the district committees would send their progress report to the provincial task force on monthly basis, adding that it would be the responsibility of provincial task force to examine the performance of provincial departments on human rights quarterly.

The minister insisted that we would not allow anyone to portray negative image of Pakistan at international level, adding that actions would be taken against the NGOs involved in negative reporting. “The task force will take action across the board against every influential involved in the violation of human rights, besides providing justice to the underprivileged and miserable strata of the society.