Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Saleem Mandviwalla, chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs, Statistics and Privatisation, said on Wednesday that the government was not ready to brief the committee about the Qarz Utaro Mulk Sanwaro Scheme or the National Debt Retirement Programme.

Presiding over the committee meeting at the Parliament House, Mandviwalla said the government had asked the committee to delay the briefing on the Debt Retirement Programme for some time.

It is worth mentioning here that the National Debt Retirement Programme in the 1990s was an attempt to rid Pakistan of foreign loans. The programme was launched in February 1997 as a special initiative to mobilise expatriate Pakistanis to help the country retire its debt.

Mandviwalla said the committee had called a man who was affected by this programme, but he could not come due to his poor health. Senator Mohsin Aziz, who is also member of the committee, said that he contributed Rs 1 million to this scheme, but the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz could not rid Pakistan of the foreign debt according to the promise it made to the nation.

Senator Mushahid Ullah Khan, another member of the committee, issued strong remarks against the committee chairman and members and said the government did not take any loan for this scheme. He said if somebody was affected by this scheme he should be called to the committee. On this, the committee chairman said the committee would call the affected people and ask them to explain how they were affected and whey they were not getting back the money they borrowed to the government at that time.

Briefing the committee about the census, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics chief Asif Bajwa said the bureau did not have the data of 70 million people of the country. He said that Pakistan’s population currently stood at 19.60 million. “Neither the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics nor the NADRA has data of 70 million people of the country,” he said. He said the bureau had made all arrangements for the census, which was scheduled to be taken in March 2016 and the Finance Ministry had released Rs 2 billion in this regard. He said the census was delayed indefinitely due to army’s involvement in the counterterrorism operations.

The Council of Common Interests (CCI) decided at its meeting on February 29 to postpone the census indefinitely.

Senator Kamil Ali Agha asked Bajwa, “Why are you and the government relaying so much on the army? Do you have an alternative plan to take the census?”

Bajwa said that right now the government had no alternative to the army; the bureau could not take the census without army’s help.