PESHAWAR - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister, Pervez Khattak, has termed it a good omen that overseas Pakistanis, especially the youth, are seeing the reforms and changes at government level in KPK with high esteem and thus have become spokespersons and ambassadors abroad.
“They not only send us useful proposals for elimination of corruption, ensuring good governance in the province but also endeavour to enable us overcome our financial and economic problems and revive our industrial base here,” he maintained while talking to a delegation of the office-bearers of an NGO of overseas Pakistanis in UK namely, Young Welfare Council.
The delegation led by Chaudhry Abdul Rafique, SVP of PTI UK Chapter, called on the Chief Minister at the CM Secretariat. Provincial Education Minister Muhammad Atif Khan, CM Advisor on Excise & Taxation Mian JamshedUddin Kakakhel and In-charge Investment Promotion Cell Rafaqat Ullah Babar were also present on this occasion. The delegation told the CM that the Council has collected donations of four containers of furniture for remote rural schools of the province where children had to sit on jute mats and bare floors due to non-availability of desks and chairs.
However the Chief Minister said that there was no more jute mat culture in the province, adding, “We would never allow lack of furniture in a single school of the province and would provide sufficient resources to gap up all such deficiencies if existed.” He said that the provincial government was introducing one and same English medium education system in KPK to vanish the dual standards that has divided the nation and created gulfs between the rich and the poor. “Hence, we were ending up with the new education system to enable a poor child become best ruler and officer of the future.” He thanked the council and overseas Pakistanis for sending donation of school furniture and termed it a good step for encouraging children and promoting education here.
Pervez Khattak while thanking the delegation for the invitation to participate as chief guest at the Business and Tourism Forum set up by the overseas Pakistani traders and investors in UK, said that though he would not be able to proceed abroad due to his heavy schedule of engagements here in the province for maintaining peace and achieving the targets of education, health emergencies and reforms in other sectors, however he would send the concerned ministers and advisors for the purpose as, he said, promotion of industrial, trade, commerce and tourism activities in the province were also among our top most priorities. He said that there was large scope of investment in hydel and solar energy generation, housing, tourism, mineral exploitation and other sectors over here and it would be in larger interest of the nation and country if overseas Pakistanis could take benefit of enormous opportunities of investment available here. He assured that all the necessary details, facilities and guarantees would be provided by the provincial govt to any interested parties in this regard.
Meanwhile the Chief Minister while talking to MPAs of Peshawar, Nowshera, Hazara and other parts of the province, said that the present PTI-led govt has given up the politics of victimization and the discrimination among govt and treasury benches but introduced a culture of cohesion. He said that the provincial assembly was a legislative entity and its members were equally respectable for govt and people. He assured that our govt would enhance their respect and dignity and would not involve them in ugly practices of corruption, nepotism and horse-trading to make them saleable commodity like that in the past regimes. He said that the govt policies would further increase the integrity of assembly members so that they would be treated with respect while travelling abroad as well. He expressed the hope that all the assembly members would support the provincial government in legislation in the larger public interest besides accelerating the process of progress and prosperity in the province.