Post Office Department to become largest banking network by December: minister

Federal Minister for Communications Murad Saeed said Pakistan Post Office Department (PPOD) would become the largest banking network of the country by December 2020 and it would disburse remittances, payments under Ehsaas' programme and provide other services.

The minister, replying to a question during the question hour of the National Assembly on Monday, said the revenue of the PPOD had increased from five percent (Rs11.74 billion) to 26 percent (Rs14.78 billion) from 2017-2018 to 2018-2019 respectively.

He said Pakistan Post network had been linked with 15,000 kiosks of the NADRA for bio-metric verification and it would be helpful in disbursing remittances, Ehsaas programme payments and other essential services.

The minister said that in the last week of that month, a home delivery service would be introduced by Pakistan Post and 125,000 franchise post offices would be set up in two years that would provide 250,000 jobs to the people.

Saeed said that a loss of Rs52 billion of the Pakistan Post had been brought down due to reforms taken by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government.

He said those included introduction of live tracking of shipments, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) plus survey for sending parcels to any destination in the world in 72 hours, entry into e-commerce sector, tapping the financial tech market of Rs200 billion, using network of 12,000 post offices in the country to deliver remittances at no charge, same day delivery in major cities of Pakistan, and improvement in Urgent Mail Service (UMS).

The minister said that so far no private courier company was registered with the Pakistan Post but a bill in that regard had been passed in the Senate and presented in the National Assembly to bring those organisations into the mainstream.

In another written reply to a question, Federal Minister for Energy Omar Ayub Khan informed the house that the TAPI Gas Pipeline Project was moving fast and its ground work had already been started in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.

He said the Project Company (TPCL) was currently negotiating TAPI, Host Government Agreement (HGA) with the Government of Pakistan.

Omar said that after the signing of the HGA, the ground breaking ceremony for Pakistan would be held and it would take 30 months to complete phase-I of the project.

He said the work on the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline Project was stalled due to international sanctions on Iran.

Omar said Pakistan had completed major project preparatory activities including bankable feasibility study; detailed route survey; front end engineering & design; installation of concrete markers on the entire route; initiation of land acquisition process; and NOCs from environmental authorities of Balochistan and Sindh.

The minister said that recently, with the approval of the federal cabinet, Pakistan and Iran had signed an Amendment Agreement No 3 to the IP GSPA giving both sides a further period of five years to complete the project. "However, any further progress is linked with lifting of US sanctions on Iran," he said.

Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari also informed the Lower House of the Parliament that currently 73,661 prisoners were in jails across the country and out of whom 44,853 were under trial prisoners, which constitute about 60 percent of the prisoners' population.

In a written reply submitted in the House by Dr Shireen Mazari, while responding to a question by Pakistan People's Party (PPP)'s lawmaker Abdul Qadir Patel, it was told that a total of 45,324 prisoners were incarcerated in Punjab jails, out of whom, 25,054 were under trial in various courts.

She said that 9,900 prisoners in which 7,067 were under-trial prisoners in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and 11,488 prisoners under trial out of 16,315 prisoners in Sindh, while 1,244 prisoners out of 2,122 were facing trial in Balochistan.

The minister further apprised the House that the ministry took notice of a large number of persons imprisoned in jails for years without a final decision of court of law through conducting visits of different prisons to monitor inmates' human rights and highlight such issues with recommendations to the concerned authorities.

She said that on the direction of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), a Commission on Prisons Reforms headed by the Federal Minister for Human Rights conducted a fact-finding report regarding the situation of jails across Pakistan and prepared a report.

Mazari said the report had been shared with the provincial chief secretaries and the Ministry of Interior for implementation of recommendations made by the commission in the report.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Shah Mahmood Qureshi told the house that as per our mission in Kabul, there were 308 Pakistani prisoners in various jails across Afghanistan.

Since 2018, 52 Pakistanis had been released from Afghan jails and repatriated to Pakistan, he said.