The provincial assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was Tuesday told that Centre and provinces have agreed on the restoration of the magistracy system in the country.
Speaking in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly in response to a question regarding the prices of the beef and mutton in the province, Provincial Minister for Information, Mian Iftikhar Hussein said that the reservations of the Punjab and Sindh provinces in this regard had already been addressed and now a formal announcement in this regard is requiring a meeting of the inter-provincial co-ordination by Federal Minister Mian Raza Rabbani to formally announce the revival of magistracy system in the country.
The house resumed proceedings after an interval of three-day with Speaker, Kiramatullah Khan in the chair. The question was submitted by Mufti Said Janan, who has got fame with raising questions of the public interest in the house.
In his supplementary question, the legislator asked that instead of the prescribed prices of beef is varying from Rs 160 to Rs 200 while mutton is sold from Rs 250 to Rs 350-kg in different districts. Both commodities are sold at exorbitant prices in the market.
The Provincial Minister for Food, Shuja Khan said that the prices of the commodities are fixed by the price review committee with District Co-ordination Officer (DCO) of each district as its chairman. He said that about nine departments are concerned with the price review committee.
He said that the government is making all out efforts for keeping check on the prices of essentials, which is evident from the 10 fold higher recovery of fines in this regard. He said that the fixation of the prices and keeping check on them is the responsibility of the district government.
Taking the floor, the Provincial Minister for Information, Mian Iftikhar Hussein said that federal government had allowed an annual export of 25000 cattle to Afghanistan, but the number is exported in a single day. For the resolution of the problem, he said that the provincial government had asked the federal government for sharing the documents of the export, which he said would help resolve the problem.
The smuggling of the livestock, he said, is carried out from our province and used for the purpose of fund raising for militants. He said that the provincial government had investigated the matter as the common man has been faceing difficulty in even finding sacrificial animals resulting in the increasing of the price of meat. The complaints, he said have been taken up with the minister concerned and he had asked the department for the addressal of the problems. "The system has deficiency, which could be filled to arrest the growing prices of the commodity," concluded Mian Iftikhar Hussein.
Meanwhile, the Provincial Minister for Secondary and Elementary Education, Sardar Hussein Babak said that the province is required the construction of 22000 class rooms in primary schools, which is not possible within the available resources of the provincial government. He said that the provincial government is engaged with the different donor agencies for seeking their assistance in construction of schools and classrooms in the schools of the province.