LAHORE: The Punjab government would build 100,000 houses in all the districts of Punjab and the Punjab Chief Minister would inaugurate this project on August 14.
Punjab Information and Culture Minister Azma Bokhari disclosed this while addressing a press conference in connection with the recent decisions taken by the Punjab Cabinet on Wednesday. Punjab Minority Affairs Minister Ramesh Singh Arora was also present on this occasion.
Azma Bokhari pointed out that the previous ‘fraudulent’ government had taken a loan worth billions of rupees (for a housing project) but not a single house was built.
The Minister told the media that the cabinet also approved the Kisan Card worth Rs400 billion and added that the Chief Minister was working on projects that were not even promised in the election campaign.
“Moreover, the welfare of orphans was important for us and thus our government was going to give electric bikes to them,” he added.
She lambasted the previous Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTA) government for making hollow promises; “they raised voice for the overseas Pakistanis, but did nothing for them, whereas our government was going to facilitate the overseas of eight countries under an online system”.
Talking about the religious minorities, she averred that they have always been very important for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Chief Minister considers them as her priority. “The countries that consider themselves champions of human rights, the Sikh Marriage Act does not exist there. Pakistan was being praised all over the world for this law,” she added.
On extremism, the Minister said that an incident related to extremism could have happened in Sargodha but they took timely action to preempt it, adding that extremism is a big problem and we have to eliminate it.
On this occasion, the Punjab Minority Affairs Minister pointed out that at the end of 2018 the Sikh Marriage Act was introduced as a private bill and later passed. Still, unfortunately, it was not taken seriously by the previous government.
“However, under our government, the rules (for the Sikh marriage) were made in a record period of three months. Punjab has become the first province where the Sikh Marriage Act has been implemented and the Sikh community is grateful to the Chief Minister and all the members of the Cabinet for this.
The work on a Hindu marriage bill was also in process,” he added. He praised CM Maryam Nawaz Sharif for giving importance to the religious minorities; she showed this by coming to Maryamabad on the occasion of Easter and distributing grants to 10,000 families, adding that she also inaugurated Baisakhi Mela.
“The entire team of the human rights department was showing excellent performance and it was preparing a five-year road map,” he added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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