Punjab cabinet, which met here on Monday under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, took a number of decisions for the welfare of masses.
These included the ratification of police reforms programme and setting up of sports' city in Lahore, besides granting in principle approval to awarding of proprietary rights to the occupancy tenants in the province.
The cabinet during its meeting discussed in detail the draft-law regarding awarding of ownership rights to occupancy tenants and gave approval in principle for placing it before the Assembly. As a result of this decision, 82,000 occupancy tenants and Muqarari Dars will have proprietary right free of cost for their land.
The Chief Minister while commenting on the decision of the cabinet said the award of free ownership rights to occupancy tenants would benefit hundred and thousands of families in the province.
He directed the concerned authorities to also expand the scope of the scheme of provision of 12 and half acres of land to landless farmers and 05 Marla plots to shelterless people in rural areas. He directed that more state land should be identified for that purpose and that process should be completed on emergent basis.
In the light of the decision taken by the cabinet, under police reforms programme, a special monthly allowance of Rs 2000 would be given to all constables and head constables in the province and for that purpose an additional amount of Rs 1.75 billion would be spent by the government annually on the constabulary of Punjab police comprising 114,000 officials.
The cabinet appreciated the new system for the posting of SHOs in police stations under Police Reforms Programme and expressed the hope that the measures taken by the government would result in improvement in the efficiency of police force and reduction in public complaints against the police department.
The Chief Minister directed that the officials who did not fulfil five basic requirements i e academic qualification, training courses, seniority, good reputation as well as superior performance and impeccable service record, should not be posted as SHO in any police station in the province.
He directed administrative authorities to evolve a foolproof monitoring system to evaluate efficiency of SHOs and strict disciplinary action should be taken against those officials who showed poor performance. He further said that the officers and officials who furnished wrong statistic about crime had no right to remain in Police department.
The cabinet also approved various measures for increasing the number of police stations in the province, appointment of supervisory officers in big cities, setting up of special centers for FIR and improvement of traffic police system.
The provincial cabinet also gave approval to the project of setting up of a sports city in Lahore over an area of 3,000 acres. Stadiums of international standard for cricket, hockey, tennis, squash and other sports will be set up under that project, costing Rs 120 billion, to be executed under private-public partnership.