Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Monday told that out of the total 350 identified micro-hydel projects 15 projects have been completed while work on 105 other was in progress. This was disclosed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Education and Energy and Power, Mohammad Atif while responding to questions of legislators during the question-hour of the provincial assembly.
The minister said that construction work on 46 other projects has been suspended after the issuance of stay order by courts against them. The provincial minister asked the members of provincial assembly for pinpointing feasible sites for construction of such micro-hydel power stations in their respective constituencies. Atif Khan said the provincial government has already identified 350 sites, which after construction through companies will be handed over to local communities. However, stay orders and recent devastated earthquake delaying the pace of work on them.
About, Elementary and Secondary Education Department, the provincial minister said that the provincial government has last year recruited 12,500 school teachers and in current budget it has once again created 10,000 vacancies of teachers. He said the recruitment of such large number of teachers and creating such huge number of vacancies in education department is a record in the history of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The provincial minister said that thousands of teachers will be recruited this year for which 1,77,000 candidates have been applied. He said that the processing of the applications of the candidates had been completed and their tests are in different phases. However, he was confident that over 12,000 teachers will be recruited by the end of December this year.
Furthermore, he said that about 1,200 recruitment were under litigation and after the decision of the court the provincial government will issue notification in this regard very soon. To a supplementary question of the Raja Faisal Zaman of PML-N about non-completion of projects relating to schools, the provincial minister said that annually 160 new schools will be established in the province.
He said that in the past, development projects were used to complete in a period of three years, but now they will complete it within a period of one year. He said during first year of the government, the work was delayed due to the hiring of consultants, but now it has been accelerated.
In response to the point of order, Special Assistant to KP Chief Minister on Information, Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani said that heavy machinery is being dispatched to landslide affected area of Havilian, Abbottabad. He was responding the Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha of PML-N, who while speaking on a point of order has complained of the suspension of road link to 40 villages due to landslide at Pouna, Abbottabad and dispatching of mobile dispensary, food and medicines to the affected areas.
The special assistant acknowledged that the recent earthquake had cracked the mountain, but with the blessing of Allah no loss of human life was occurred. He said that he had talked to district administration, saying the provincial government was taking all possible steps and relief was being dispatched to the area.
He said that survey of the affected road has completed and restoration work on it will start within one or two days. Earlier, Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha has demanded the dispatching of machinery to the area till tomorrow evening. Otherwise, he said the people of 40 villages will stage strong protest and being their elected representative, he will also join them. He demanded the restoration of the report within few days. Meanwhile, the provincial assembly also offered fateha for the eternal peace of the departed soul of senior PPP leader, Makhdoom Amin Fahim and paid tributes to his services for democracy in the country.
Paying tributes to late PPP stalwart the parliamentary leader of ANP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, Sardar Hussain Babak said that Amin Fahim was an important political leader, who had rendered sacrifices for democracy in the country. The death of Amin Fahim, he said, has created a big vacuum and prayed that PPP will fulfil that vacuum.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2015

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