Hitting out: ‘Health, education K-P govt priority’

Pervez Khattak says legislation more important than inaugurating motorways

PESHAWAR: Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak in a veiled reference to the prime minister on Tuesday said reforms in health, education and other government departments were bigger achievements than inaugurating a motorway.

PTI, he said, took time to legislate laws for the health sector adding that a Metro Bus Service will also be launched in the provincial capital.

Addressing an inaugural ceremony of a nine bedded general Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Lady Reading Hospital, he stated that since the provincial government was focusing on reforming health sector and to facilitate the general public, medicines were being provided free of cost at health facilities and the general public was benefiting from it.

Taking a jibe at the former government, the chief minister said that all one had to do to see PTI’s achievements was to compare it to the previous government.

“Inaugurating a motorway is not something really big but besides health, we are reforming the educational sector so that the underprivileged benefit from it,” Khattak told the participants, adding that other mega projects were also underway in the province.

The new general ICU was completed at a cost of Rs50 million and Senator Ilyas Ahmad Bilour’s funds were utilized for the project. Fresh machinery with ventilators and other essential machines have also been installed. Since the funds were issued by Senator Ilyas Ahmad Bilour, Khattak ordered the ICU be named after Shabbir Bilour Shaheed.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2017.