Daily Times

The National Assembly on Saturday approved 10 demands for grants of Interior Division worth Rs. 172,479,640,000 by rejecting all cut motions on them.

The cut motions were moved on eight demands for grants by the opposition lawmakers but all were rejected on them. The demands for grants were moved by the Minister for Industries and Production and all were passed by the House after voice voting.

The House approved demands for grants worth Rs. 1,135,194,000 of Interior Division to meet expenditure during financial year ending on June 30, 2021; Rs. 5,854,041,000 in respect of other expenditure of Interior Division; Rs. 5,029,235,000 in respect of Miscellaneous Expenditure of Interior Division; Rs 9,933,189,000 in respect of Islamabad; Rs 2,964,943,000 in respect of passport organization; Rs 93,282,260,000 in respect of civil armed forces; Rs 11,311,962,000 for Frontier Constabulary; Rs 2,299,879,000 in respect of Pakistan Coast Guards; Rs 25,947,624,000 in respect of Pakistan Rangers; and 14,721,313,000 for development expenditures of Interior Division.

Parliamentary Secretary for Interior, Shaukat Ali responded to the queries raised by the opposition during their speeches on cut motions. Later the House passed all the demand for grants and rejected the cut motions move by the opposition members.

Separately, the National Assembly approved five demands for grants of Industries and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Secretariat worth Rs 11,215,460,000 by rejecting all cut motions on them.

The Lower House approved demands for grant worth Rs. 320,098,000 for Industries and Production division; Rs 952,354,000 in respect of other expenditure of industries and production division; Rs 9,058,905,000 in respect of miscellaneous expenditures of industries and production division; and Rs 800,000,000 in respect of capital outlay on industrial development.

Meanwhile the NA also approved demand for grant worth of Rs 84,103,000 for FATF Secretariat. The House rejected all cut motions on aforementioned demands for grants. Responding to these cut motions, the Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar said that auto-mobile policy would be revised and all safety measures would be ensured in it.

He said that ranking of Pakistan has improved in Ease of Doing Business while 14 out of 27 targets set for FATF have been met while action is underway on remaining 13 targets.

Hammad Azhar said that Pakistan was put on grey list of FATF during previous tenure of PML-N. He said that proceedings of FATF were suspended for six months due to COVID-19 and every possible effort was underway to pursue all targets.

Speaking in the assembly, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan said that the government had fully embarked upon the agenda of observing austerity across all the government institutions and departments. He said the Prime Minister Office saved 29 percent of its budget during the year 2019-20 as an amount of Rs 137 million out of total allocation of Rs 474 million had been returned. Similarly, he said in 2018-19, Rs 454 million were allocated for Prime Minister House, out of which only Rs 304 million were utilized during the year.

With respect to expenditures in Prime Minister House, the minister of state said that the expenditures were brought down from Rs 1.4 billion to Rs 670 million.

He said numbers of employees which were 522 were reduced by half while numbers of vehicles were also brought down from 74 to 46. He said the Prime Minister lived in his own house in Bani Gala and unlike in the past there was no camp office of Prime Minister. He said former prime minister had declared his house at Raiwind Lahore as a camp house where all types of expenditures were paid from the government exchequer.

Giving details of expenditures incurred during visits of the heads of states to United Nations annual meeting, Ali Muhammad Khan said US$1.3 million were spent during the visit of former president Asif Ali Zardari to the UN, while $1.1 million were spent during visit of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Similarly, he said during visit of former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi visit, an amount of $500,000 was spent while Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit incurred only $162,000 from the national exchequer.