South Punjab to get forensic lab

CM orders timely completion of development projects in backward areas

LAHORE:

Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar has announced a plan to set up a state-of-the-art forensic laboratory for South Punjab in Dera Ghazi Khan for providing assistance to the police, prosecutors and judiciary.

He said in a statement that staff from Khyber-Pakhtinkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan would also be trained in the Forensic Sciences Training Lab. He lauded the performance of the Punjab Forensic Science Agency for solving all recent high profile cases.

The chief minister said the Centre of Forensic Training Lab was a source of pride for the whole country. The training lab constructed at a cost of Rs1.9 billion has been made functional in Lahore.

He said the modern equipment and trained staff of forensic lab provided incontestable facts. The services of the Punjab Forensic Science Agency are not only recognised at the national level but at the international level as well. He said that government would provide resources for the early completion of the building of the Punjab Food, Drug and Agriculture Authority.

Chief Minister Buzdar also directed the authorities concerned to complete all ongoing health projects in Dera Ghazi Khan and other backward areas of the province within the stipulated timeframe.

The chief minister said he was monitoring the development projects of Public welfare.

He said the Nishtar Hospital-II in Multan would soon be opened. A modern mother & child hospital is being established in DG Khan, which will cost Rs3.8 billion. Emergency and outpatient departments are being set up in the local teaching hospital at a cost of Rs3.84 billion.

He pointed out that the Barthi Tehsil Headquarters Hospital had been upgraded to 60 beds. It will provide healthcare facilities to the people of Balochistan as well.

The Taunsa Tehsil Headquarters Hospital has been upgraded to 190 beds. A Satellite Filter Clinic will be set up in Chah Zanbo Wala, Koh-e-Sulaiman.

The chief minister said the people of three provinces would benefit from the Sardar Fateh Muhammad Buzdar Institute of Cardiology. Construction of the 200-bed institute will cost Rs2 billion. He stated that the 100-bed first phase of the institute would be made functional in a few months.

The institution would help reduce the workload of the Multan and Lahore cardiology institutes, he added.

Chief Minister Buzdar asserted in another statement that the government had eradicated the tradition of wasting national resources on exhibitory projects. He said the people’s money was now being spent only on their welfare.

The chief minister said politics was meant for serving the people but the menace of corruption had kept the country backward. The present government had curbed the political culture of loot and plunder.

Indiscriminate action had been taken against the influential land mafia in Punjab and valuable state land worth billions of rupees had been vacated, he added.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Buzdar said in a statement issued to mark the Kashmir Solidarity Day that the Indian government had written a new history of barbarity and savagery by committing unbearable brutalities in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir.

The chief minister said the Indian government was involved in extrajudicial killing of innocent Kashmiri people. Innocent Kashmiri youths are being brutally murdered on a daily basis.

He said there was no justification for the international community to remain silent over Indian atrocities and terrorism.

The chief minister said the nefarious designs of India to change the Muslim majority in the region into a minority through genocide will be foiled. He said the night of tyranny of the Modi regime was about to end and the independence of the occupied region was not far away. He said no one could isolate Kashmir from Pakistan as both are conjoined twins and the whole Pakistani nation is standing beside the oppressed Kashmiris.

He said India must understand that the legitimate struggle of Kashmiris for their right to self-determination could not be suppressed at gunpoint.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2022.