Govt committed to facilitate masses: Dr Firdous

LAHORE: Special Assistant to Chief Minister on Information Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said on Wednesday the Punjab government was committed to facilitate masses and had created ease in the lives of people by providing prompt and easy access to land records.

Modern technology was being introduced in the land record centers to keep the system smooth and transparent.

She disclosed this to media men here in a press conference where Provincial Minister for Revenue Col. (Retd.) Malik Mohammad Anwar also accompanied her.

Dr Firdous said that good governance, transparency and provision of better facilities to masses were the top priorities of the government. She said the Sharif family fraudulently transferred hundreds of acres of land, mostly in the name of its family members, adding that the Sharif family changed the master plan of Lahore and purchased land worth billions of rupees on cheap rates.

She alleged that Sharif family marked the beginning of corruption in Pakistan and was behind every big scandal. Shehbaz Sharif snatched the valuable agricultural land of poor farmers to establish residential colonies, she said.

She said Punjab, known as the food basket of Pakistan, was looted in the name of industrialization.

The Special Assistant said the PTI government was taking pragmatic steps to promote agriculture besides setting up 13 Special Economic Zones.

She said previously, the revenue officers used to take bribe instead of generating revenue for the state, adding that the PTI government had retrieved 140,000 acres of land from land mafias. She said the revenue department collected 46 per cent more revenue as compared to previous year.

Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said that as Chairman Kashmir Committee, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman never set out to conquer Kashmir and today he had set out to conquer Rawalpindi.

She said the Prime Minister Imran Khan had waged an arduous struggle against the menace of corruption, adding that accountability of looters was imperative.

The corrupt elements had been helplessness in front of the prescient leader like Imran Khan.

She said that those who were chanting hollow slogans today had emptied the national exchequer in the past and escaped the country by entering into expensive agreements and deals for LNG and electricity.

Answering a question on the increase in electricity tariff, the Special Assistant said that the government was bound to respect international agreements signed during the previous regime. She said a tug of war was going on within the PML-N and everybody had prepared its own list of candidates for senate elections.

On this occasion, Col (R) Malik Mohammad Anwar said that the Chief Minister Usman Buzdar had inaugurated 115 land record centers at the Qanoongoi level, Satellite Land Record Center and 20 mobile land centers to facilitate the masses. He said the urban digitalization system was being introduced with the support of World Bank.

The registry system had been computerized in 100 tehsils, he mentioned.

The provincial minister said that overseas Arazi (land) record centres had also been established in Pakistan's embassies in the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to facilitate expatriate Pakistanis.