Senate session: ‘Rs260b disbursed in agri loans last year’
Responding to questions in the upper house, minister for food and agriculture Nazar Muhammad Gondal said successful experiments have been conducted for the cultivation of tea and olives.
A commercial tea production project over 4,200 acres of land is in progress in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and Kashmir, through a public-private partnership, said Gondal, adding that incentives are also being provided to the farmers to cultivate olives in K-P, Punjab and Balochistan.
Lining of 14,262 kilometres of water courses has been completed during the last three years while work on the lining of 4,152 water courses is underway and expected to be completed by June 2011, he added.
In reply to a point of order, Senator Raza Rabbani told the house that the economic affairs division and the foreign office would take care of the international agreements pertaining to the devolved ministries.
Minister for livestock Mir Humayun Aziz Kurd informed the Senate that over 300,000 animals have been exported during the last two years. Meanwhile minister for health Makhdoom Shahabuddin said the government has approved a revised PC-I of the National Aids Control Programme, under which about Rs2 billion would be spent to prevent this disease.
Senator Waqar Ahmad said there was no plan under consideration to privatise Pakistan Post but the shares of the organisation would be distributed among its employees.
Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) senators Professor Khurshid Ahmed, Professor Muhammad Ibrahim Khan and Afya Zia submitted an amendment bill in the Senate secretariat for the welfare of persons with disabilities.
The amendments to the original bill passed in 1981 propose a practical system to be deployed at district, tehsil and union council levels, the JI senators told the reporters.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 5th, 2011.
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