Khyber Pakhtunkhwa seeks funds for family welfare centres

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has sought funds from the Centre for opening new family welfare centres to pursue population control polices, provincial Minister
for Population Welfare Saleem Khan said on Friday.

Appearing in the `Mulaqat Programme` of Khyber Union of Journalists at Peshawar Press Club, the minister said the government didn`t want to force people into opting
for birth control but felt they should appreciate the need for birth spacing to contain population explosion, especially in view of the limited resources available for national development.

A draft population policy would be submitted to the provincial cabinet soon, he said, hoping that its approval would help control the high birth rate in the province.

Mr Saleem said the government was trying to increase public awareness of family planning through media that population explosion had deprived the people of health
and other facilities. Weak population control measures by successive governments compounded such problems, he said.

The minister said that despite the militancy and negative impacts of last year`s rains and flash floods, the government was trying its best to solve the people`s
problems. Terrorism has cost the country over $10 billion in recent years, according to the minister.

Questioned about the long delay in completing the Lowari Tunnel project, he said its construction was started in 1974 by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto`s government but former
military ruler Ziaul Haq stopped the work for political reasons. Had the work continued, the tunnel would have become operational long ago, he said.

It goes to the credit of the present government that it resumed work on the project, he said, adding that the first phase had been completed, while the second phase,
redesigned to cut the cost, would be launched soon.

He rejected the allegations of former Jamaat-i-Islami MNA Abdul Akbar Chitrali that the government had stopped work on Lowari Tunnel and said the government had only
converted the rail project into a road project for being unfeasible due to weather conditions.

The minister said Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had announced Rs2 billion for the project, while its total cost was estimated to be Rs18 billion, adding that
over Rs7 billion had been spent on it so far.

He said the Chitral-Tajikistan Road project was also under consideration and that the Lowari Tunnel was part of it, adding that feasibility of the project had been
prepared but the same had yet to be done on the Afghanistan side.

Mr Saleem said after the approval of the feasibility report, work on the project would get underway. He said the road would not only facilitate Chitral people but
would also benefit business community of the country.

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Posted by Sonia Bashir on Oct 28 2011. Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry