Tuesday, 18 August, 2020 I 27 Dhul-Hijjah, 1441 I Rs 15.00 I Vol XI No 49 I 12 Pages I Karachi Edition
Pakistan’s July remittanCes surge to reCord $2.76bn g
Gen Bajwa meets Saudi counterpart during fence-mending visit
RemittanceS incReaSed 36.5pc -- the hiGheSt-eveR level witneSSed By the countRy in a SinGle month
KARACHI MEIRYUM ALI
r
emittanceS rose to $2.77 billion in July, which is the highest ever level of remittances in a single month in pakistan, according to data released by the State Bank of pakistan (SBp) on monday. that represents a year-on-year growth of 36.5pc when compared with July 2019, and 12.2pc when compared to June 2020. last month, remittances were recorded at $2.47 billion, which the SBp had dubbed as ‘historic’ at the time. most of the remittances in July were received from Saudi arabia, at $821.6 million; followed by uae, at $538.2 million; uK, at $393.9 million; and the uS, at $250.6 million. the central bank also noted that the growth rate in remittances compared to the same month in the previous year is around twice as high as the eid-ul-adha re-
lated seasonality typically experienced over the last decade. “Given the impact of covid-19 globally, this increase in worker’s remittances is encouraging,” the SBp said. why have remittances increased? overall, there are two main factors that explain the rise in remittances, along with some minor reasons. the first is that it seems the use of official channels to send remittances has increased, and there has been a decline in traditional hawala and hundi methods of sending cash home. Saad hashmi, executive director of Bma capital, said that the switch from informal to formal was the most likely reason for the rise in remittances. this was a view reiterated by Sateesh Balani, director of research at ismail iqbal Securities, who said, “people might be compelled to use official banking channels as flight reduction may have impacted unofficial flows.”
Coronavirus in
Pakistan
CONFIRMED CASES:
289,214
LAST UPDATED AT 08:53 AM ON AUGUST 17, 2020 DAY'S DEATH TOLL: NEW CASES:
7
488
RECOVERED:
DEATHS:
SINDH:
PUNJAB:
269,087 6,175 126,182 KP:
35,215 AJK/GB:
95,447 BALOCHISTAN:
12,295
ISLAMABAD:
2,184/2,502 15,390
typically, money is sent to pakistan by people physically carrying cash in their luggage, when they travel to visit pakistan. however, due to the covid-19 pandemic, and the subsequent cancellation in flights, people were forced to switch to formal channels, in an effort to make sure money reached their families. in addition, the movement of cash transported on flights increases during hajj and umrah season. But this year, due to the covid-19 pandemic there was a limited hajj, and a bank on umrah, which further curtailed people’s ability to send money through informal channels, and pushed them to use formula channels. For its part, the central bank acknowledged this as a factor in its statement, saying the central bank and the federal government had taken steps under the pakistan Remittance initiative, including reducing the threshold for eligible transactions from $200 to $100 under the Reimbursement of telegraphic transfer (tt) charges Scheme, pushing for adoption of digital channels, and starting targeted marketing campaigns to promote formal channels for sending remittances. pakistan’s informal economy, and informal cash transfers, are rarely recorded in official data. according to some analysts, the jump could actually serve as a more accurate representation of remittances in pakistan, which are much higher than previously perceived. the second factor is that there has been significant job losses in Saudi arabia and the Gulf region due to the covid-19 pandemic, where most pakistani overseas labour works. additionally, Saudi arabia was also impacted by an oil slump, leading to a loss of jobs in that sector. in July alone, more than 50,000 pakistani workers who had lost their jobs had registered themselves with the overseas employment corporation’s (oec) portal in search of job opportunities.
ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT
chief of army Staff (coaS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on monday discussed prospects of military cooperation and ways to boost it as well as other topics of common interest with his Saudi counterpart during his visit to the kingdom. the army chief reached Saudi arabia on monday, the pakistan embassy in Riyadh confirmed, amid a diplomatic spat that has threatened Riyadh’s financial lifeline to the cash-strapped economy. General Bajwa reached Riyadh at 10:00 am, the embassy said. inter-Services intelligence (iSi) director General General Faiz hameed also accompanied the army chief. the Saudi chief of General Staff major General Fayyad bin hammad al-Ruwaili received Bajwa, the Saudi ministry of defence said in a statement on its website. “during their meeting, they discussed prospects of military cooperation and ways to boost it as well as other topics of common interest,” the statement said. the two countries are traditionally close and Saudi arabia in 2018 gave pakistan a $3 billion
Zardari, Gilani to be indicted in Toshakhana reference next month ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT
an accountability court on monday fixed September 9 as a new date to frame charges against former president asif ali Zardari and and former prime minister yousuf Raza Gilani in the toshakhana reference. Zardari had arrived in court with his children party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and aseefa Bhutto-Zardari amid heavy security. due to the covid-19 situation, the party had advised workers and supporters not to attend the hearing. the hearing was marred by bickering between national accountability Bureau (naB) prosecutor Sardar muzaffar abbasi and the legal counsels of Zardari and pml-n supreme leader nawaz Sharif, both of whom are nominated in the reference. Barrister tassaduq hanif told the court that he was manhandled by the police while Zardari’s legal counsel Farooq naek said he was not being allowed to enter the court premises. Jahangir Jadoon, who was representing nawaz, also said the same, sparking a reaction from the naB prosecutor. “if you want to proceed with the case then you will have to decide if lawyers can appear in this court,” naek said before the judge. he also pointed out that the courtroom was full of people. “asif Zardari is ill, if [he] contracts coronavirus,
CIE results to be based on teachers' assessment STORY ON BACKPAGE
loan and $3.2 billion oil credit facility to help its balance of payments crisis. But Riyadh is irked by criticism from pakistan that Saudi arabia has been lukewarm on the Kashmir issue, two senior military officials had told Reuters, motivating the army chief’s planned visit. last week, inter-Services public Relations (iSpR) had confirmed that the coaS was travelling, though the official line was that the visit was pre-planned and “primarily military affairs oriented”. pakistan has long pressed the Saudi-led organisation of islamic countries (oic) to convene a highlevel meeting to highlight indian violations in occupied Kashmir. But the oic has only held low-level meetings so far. on august 5, Foreign minister Shah mahmood Qureshi had said: “i am once again respectfully telling the oic that a meeting of the council of Foreign ministers is our expectation.” “if you cannot convene it, then i will be compelled to ask prime minister imran Khan to call a meeting of the islamic countries that are ready to stand with us on the issue of Kashmir and support the oppressed Kashmiris,” he added.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 05
more inside
Murad says no agreement reached with PTI, MQM-P yet STORY ON PAGE 03
10 die as boat capsizes in Keenjhar lake STORY ON PAGE 02 who will be responsible?” he pointed out that former prime minister Gilani contracted the infection after a court appearance. TOSHAKHANA REFERENCE: the reference states that Zardari and Sharif obtained cars from toshakhana by paying 15 per cent of the price of the cars. the bureau further alleged that Gillani facilitated Zardari and nawaz in this regard. he dishonestly and illegally relaxed the procedure for the acceptance and disposal of gifts, issued by the government of pakistan vide cabinet division’s memorandum no.9/8/2004-tK dated June 25, 2007, which expressly stipulates that vehicles shall not be allowed to be purchased by the recipients and be given to the central pool of care of the cabinet division.
British government faces mounting pressure over exam row
CONTINUED ON PAGE 05
STORY ON BACK PAGE
Israel, UAE open phone link after peace deal STORY ON BACK PAGE
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Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
NEWS
shc qUashes sUgar inqUiry report, orders fresh investigation KARACHI
t
STAFF REPORT
ERMING the Sugar Inquiry Commission report null and void on Monday, the Sindh High Court (SHC) ordered the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to launch a fresh investigation into the matter. A division bench of the SHC comprising Justice KK Agha and Justice Omar Sial announced the reserved verdict on a petition filed by the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA) against an inquiry commission formed by the government to probe into a sugar crisis that hit the country earlier this year. The report highlighted the increase in sugar prices across the country. The court also directed the FBR, FIA, and NAB to include in the investigation people who had knowledge about the sugar industry. The bench urged the institutions
ML-1 to ensure upgraded rail services, create jobs: pM ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday said Main Line-1 project would prove as an opportunity for advanced up-gradation of railways besides creating thousands of jobs in the country. Chairing a meeting on the ML-1 project to review its progress, the prime minister termed ML-1 an essential segment of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and expressed confidence that it would boost economic activity. PM Imran said that ML-1 project would ensure the provision of best passenger and goods services as the government was focusing on giving priority to public welfare and development. He said that the ML-1 project would open new vistas of social and economic avenues. The meeting was attended by Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Planning Minister Asad Umer, Finance Adviser Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, CPEC Authority Chairman Lieutenant General (r) Asim Saleem Bajwa and senior officials. The prime minister was briefed on the implementation of the ML-1 project within stipulated time-frame and its benefits as well. Under the ML-1 project, the 1,872 kilometres rail track from Karachi to Peshawar will be doubled. The speed of passenger trains will be increased to 160 km/h with freight trains to be operated at 120 km/h. The project will ensure computerized signalling and control system. The Executive Committee of National Economic Council this month gave nod to ML-1 project at an estimated cost of $6.806 billion under CPEC. APP
Universal number plates, e-auction system inaugurated in punjab LAHORE: Punjab Minister for Excise and Taxation and Narcotics Control, Hafiz Mumtaz Ahmad inaugurated universal number plates and e-auction system at Excise and Taxation Department Punjab on Monday. Ahmad said that earlier, the series of motor vehicles registration were carried out in each category on district basis. He said due to the resale market, there was massive pressure on the registration department in Lahore. Universal registration series will help cope up these issues. He said that equal registration could be possible in all districts under universal series. People and law enforcement agencies can easily report the number of vehicles in any unpleasant incident. This process will also eliminate the corruption. The minister further stated that the process of getting attractive numbers has been made easier for the public. Now people can take part in the process of auction through e-auction system. TLTP
to find out if anyone was given illegal or unjust subsidy. The court directed NAB, the FIA, and FBR to carry out fresh investigations as per the law. The court ordered NAB to carry out an independent investigation according to line with the NAB Ordinance. “If any government official has misused his powers, it should be investigated,”
said the SHC. It also asked the FBR to investigate the matter according to the country’s tax laws. Earlier, soon after the report surfaced, sugar mill owners challenged the commission’s finding in the Sindh and Islamabad high courts to stop the government from taking action against them. The SHC had halted the operation of the report to the extent of 12 sugar mills. The federal government, however, through the office of the attorney general of Pakistan, had moved the apex court, praying to grant leave to appeal. Last month, the Supreme Court (SC) rejected the plea of the federal government seeking suspension of the SHC order that had halted the operation of the recommendations of the report. The apex court rejected the plea of the federal government and referred the matter to a threemember bench with the observation that the instant matter will be decided on merit and adjourned it till further hearing. The bench later recalled the stay and directed both the SHC and the IHC to decide on the legal proceedings pending before them within three weeks.
More trade among SAARC states to reduce poverty: FM ISLAMABAD TLTP
Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said that promoting economic and trade cooperation among SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries will help reduce poverty in the region and improve the living standards of the people. He was talking to a delegation of SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry headed by its President Iftikhar Malik here on Monday. He said that promoting trade relations with SAARC countries is Pakistan’s top priority but, unfortunately, the volume of trade among SAARC member countries is quite low, and it needs to increase. Iftikhar Malik assured the foreign minister that as president of the SAARC Chamber of Commerce, he would do his utmost to promote trade and economic cooperation among the SAARC countries. He also briefed the foreign minister about the new building of SAARC Chamber Headquarters in Islamabad. Meanwhile, the newly-appointed High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to Pakistan, Admiral (Retd) Mohan Wijewickrama, called on Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Monday. The foreign minister congratulated the high commissioner on assuming his responsibilities and expressed the
hope that friendly ties between the two countries will be further strengthened during his tenure. During the meeting, views were exchanged on the entire spectrum of bilateral relations. The foreign minister felicitated the government and people of Sri Lanka on the successful conduct of parliamentary elections, the first elections to be held in South Asia during COVID-19. Qureshi reaffirmed the importance of strong bilateral ties and underscored the need to further deepen and broaden cooperation in all areas of mutual interest. Expressing satisfaction at the current trajectory of bilateral relations, the foreign minister underscored the importance of further strengthening all existing consultations mechanisms between the two countries. He also emphasized the need to enhance the volume of bilateral trade and achieve the annual target of $1 billion. The foreign minister conveyed that Pakistan stood as a proud partner of Sri Lanka in its human resource development, security cooperation, fight against terrorism, and progress and prosperity. He wished peace and prosperity for the brotherly people of Sri Lanka. The high commissioner conveyed his government’s appreciation for Pakistan’s consistent support to Sri Lanka at their times of need. Reciprocating the warm sentiments, he expressed his commitment to work for further increasing the momentum of bilateral relations.
10 die as boat capsizes in Keenjhar LaKe THATTA TLTP
At least 10 dead bodies have been retrieved and three persons were rescued alive from Keenjhar Lake when a boat capsized on Monday. The search and rescue operation has been concluded as the teams have recovered all persons missing in the deep water after the sorrowful incident. The police officials have arrested sailor, Abdul Jabbar, over charges of overloading the boat. At least 10 people including eight women and two children drowned when a boat capsized in Keenjhar Lake on Monday. Three women were rescued alive by the rescue workers. The affected persons belong to Mehmoodabad area of Karachi. According to police, at least 13 people were on board when the boat overturned in Keenjahr Lake. People present at the scene managed to rescue two of them who were shifted to a hospital, while the search for the remaining people was completed after the arrival of expert divers and special boats. Taking notice of the incident, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah summoned a report from authorities concerned. Pakistan Navy personnel including divers and medical team have also taken part in the search and rescue mission following the request of the local administration. Moreover, the deputy commissioner and SSP were also present on the scene to supervise the rescue operation. Keenjhar commonly called Malik Lake is located in Thatta district of Sindh. It is situated about 36 kilometres from the city of Thatta. It is the second-largest freshwater lake in Pakistan and an important source of drinking water for Thatta district and Karachi city.
WHO to provide $100,000 to Punjab for epidemic prevention project LAHORE TLTP
Punjab will set up centres to control epidemics and communicable diseases and experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) will be asked to train local professionals. Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid said this during a meeting with Country Director WHO Dr Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala at Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department on Monday. The provincial health minister and the WHO country director discussed issues of mutual interest. Dr Mahipala appreciated Punjab for adopting an integrated strategy for the control of epidemics. The visiting director said that the WHO will allocate $100,000 for epidemic prevention and control, assuring full support to
Punjab for the project including training of technical staff from the United States. The WHO country director also added that the project to control epidemics is extremely important in Punjab. The minister gave a detailed overview of the integrated strategy to control epidemics and communicable diseases highlighting a roadmap for future. She said, “In order to combat epidemics, a research and development wing will be set up. We are keen to learn global best practices from reputable international health organisations. We are grateful to the WHO for appreciating our projects and pledging funds as well.” Secretary Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department Captain (r) Usman Younis, Director General Health Services Punjab Dr Haroon Jehangir, Additional Secretary Technical Dr Asim Altaf, Dr Jamshed and other senior officers and professionals were present on the occasion.
JSCL denies involvement in alleged attempt to take over HUMNL KARACHI ARIBA SHAHID
Jahangir Siddiqui & Co Limited (JSCL) on Monday wrote a letter to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) denying its involvement in an alleged attempt to take over Hum Network Limited (HUMNL). The letter was written with reference to the letter from Hum Network Limited (HUMNL) posted on the PSX on August 10, 2020 alleging the groups involvement in a covert takeover attempt of HUMNL. The letter by JSCL is undersigned by the company secretary Syad Ali Hasham. JSCL felt the need to write a point wise reply to clarify its position regarding reports alleging that the company was involved in a covert attempt to take over HUMNL. The
company said that the letter was written “considering the gravity and severity of the allegations (which have caused huge reputational damage to JS Group”. “It is clear that the company (HUMNL) has tried to club the shareholding of Kingsway Capital and Munaf Ibrahim with JS Group’s shareholding with mala fide intent to deliberately mislead the public and regulators as well as cast a negative image on JS Group,” the letter stated. This is said, taking into account that HUMNL has itself in its letter agreed that JS Group companies hold 9.94 per cent shares in HUMNL. “It is the right of every shareholder to contest election of directors provided he/she has the requisite shareholding either on his/her own or through soliciting proxies from other shareholders.” The letter added
that the exercise of such a right by an individual does not mean that they are acting against the law. Moreover, the letter stated that on June 30, 2020, the aggregate holding of HUMNL shares by JS Group was 94,027,500 shares, out of which, 11,622,000 shares were owned by JSCL, 79,030,303 shares by JS Bank Limited, and 3,375,197 shares by a company that is associated to JSCL and its subsidiaries. The name, however, is not mentioned. The letter said that HUMNL has incorrectly stated JS Group’s holding. As per the letter, JSCL said that its holding in HUMNL is less than 10 per cent. JS Group also denied the allegation that JS Group and Kingsway Capital are acting in concert at the forthcoming election of directors at HUMNL saying that such allega-
tions were “baseless and without merit.” In addition, the group said that Kingsway is completely separate and independent of the JS Group. The group also pointed out that in the past, Kingsway Capital and other foreign shareholders have supported HUMNL’s management in their activities. The group further said that Kingsway Capital has previously acted as a proxy in favor of HUMNL’s management. “It is an absolute slur to blame JS Group for any shortcomings that the management of the company [HUMNL] may have had in maintaining cordial relations with its institutional investors,” said the letter. “For the forthcoming election of directors to be held on August 22, 2020, the [HUMNL] management may be finding it difficult to convince foreign shareholders to
Lhc directs caa to explain suspension of pia pilot's licence LAHORE APP
The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday annulled a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) order to revoke the licence of a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) pilot for allegedly being fake/dubious and issued a notice to the authority to submit its response in this regard. Justice Jawad Hassan took up a petition moved by Umar Saleem challenging the suspension of his license. Saleem contended that he has been a staffer of the national flag-carrier since 2006 and was promoted to captain in 2015. He complained that the CAA director general, without giving him a fair hearing, suspended his license on July 10. The petitioner told the court his license had been renewed five times and was valid until 2024. He requested the court to grant a stay order against the CAA order until a final decision comes on his petition. The judge wondered if the authority ever revoked a license for misbehaving or sleeping during the flight.
provide their proxies in favor of the retiring directors due to the extremely poor performance of the company and huge losses.” JSCL stated that Aitkenstuart Pakistan Private Limited (APPL) is a separate entity and unrelated to the JS Group. Furthermore, the letter stated that the shareholders list available to the group on June 30, 2020 does not have APPL listed. As a result, the group questioned why HUMNL included APPL’s name in the letter it wrote to the PSX. Moreover, the letter pointed to the fact that HUMNL has mentioned that APPL is owned by OBS Health Care Private Limited. JSCL clarified that OBS Health Care is also not related to or connected with the JS Group. The letter went on to say that Munaf Ibrahim has also not been associated with the JS Group under any capacity since leaving JSCL eight year ago, when he was the chief executive of JSCL. Furthermore, JS Group stated that the trading activity of Ibrahim and any firm that render services to him are not the group's concern.
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
NEWS
MUrad says no agreeMent reached with pti, MqM-p yet KARACHI
s
STAFF REPORT
INDH Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Monday rejected reports that an agreement had been reached between the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) to resolve some of the issues marring governance in Karachi. Reportedly, a senior member of the security establishment flew to Karachi on Saturday to have all the three parties sit together so that they could mutually find a solution to Karachi’s problems that have been troubling the top military leadership for quite some time. Multiple reports suggest the three parties on Sunday in principle agreed to take joint measures for the betterment of the country’s commercial capital. The stakeholders reportedly also decided to cope with heavy monsoon rains which have overwhelmed its infrastructure and killed dozens of people since July. However, addressing a press conference in Karachi, Murad refuted the reports and strongly emphasised that “under no con-
dition would Sindh shares power with anyone”. He further said that there had been a number of discussions over the last few days regarding the issue by people seeking to “harm the constitution” or “cause harm to my dear country”. He noted that the Constitution has set out the powers for all of Pakistan’s four provinces. “These talks [about taking away Sindh’s powers] are not new … enemies of the country have discussed this previously,” CM Murad said. “Sindh is our mother. Whoever talks about dividing it into pieces, we will all stand against them. When I did a speech in the [Sindh] Assembly and asked people supporting this to stand up, a few people kept sitting. These are the people whom I will not call enemies of Sindh but enemies of Pakistan,” he added. The chief minister also requested the media to not propagate such ideas either because he said it “causes sadness to the people of Sindh”. He said this was not the first time such discussions were taking place and such things are brought up in order to “divert attention” from the prevailing issues. MQM-P leader and Minister for In-
cfo of sharif group of companies remanded in nab custody LAHORE: An accountability court on Monday granted 14 days’ physical remand of chief financial officer (CFO) of Sharif Group of Companies to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). The NAB produced Muhammad Usman, the CFO of Sharif Group of Companies, before Admin Judge Jawadul Hassan in the accountability court. The NAB prosecutor sought physical remand of the accused and argued that Muhammad Usman has played a key role in alleged money laundering by the Sharif family. “The accused was supervising the accounts of Sharifs and was involved in money laundering,” the NAB lawyer further argued. Mushtaq Cheeni, an approver in the money laundering case, had also stated about the involvement of Usman in money laundering by Sharifs, NAB prosecutor further said. “On the instructions of Salman Shehbaz, Muhammad Usman was operating fake TT system and conducting money laundering in collaboration with Qasim Qayyum,” accountability bureau’s lawyer further said. After arguments of the prosecutor, the court extended the physical remand of accused Usman for 14 days and ordered the NAB to produce him before the court on August 31. The NAB has filed a reference against Shehbaz Sharif family in the money laundering case. The reference against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz his sons Hamza and Salman Shehbaz was registered at the office of the accountability court’s admin judge. TLTP
formation Technology and Telecommunication Syed Aminul Haque confirmed to Arab News on Monday that a meeting had in fact taken place in Islamabad last week. “A meeting of the three parties was held in Islamabad on Wednesday and a follow-up huddle almost with similar participation was held in Karachi on Saturday.” “There was talk of forming of a committee but there has been no agreement yet,” the chief minister said while addressing a press conference at the Chief Minister House in Karachi. He added that the committee will only have members of the government and not from political parties. “I will always follow the party policy, which is that everything will be handled according to law,” he said. CM Murad also hit out at the PTI, saying that it was now “anxious” to sit with the Sindh government and talk about Karachi’s problems. He alleged that the Centre was talking about the issues of Karachi to hide its failures at the international failure, hinting at the foreign minister’s recent statement on Saudi Arabia. He added that the situation of Karachi and other cities had
been the same more or less because of the current spell of rains that had hit the country. Without naming the federal government, he continued: “Do we not know the issues right now? What India is doing to Kashmiris [and] the diplomatic mistakes you have made. Now you have to divert attention and you can’t find anything other than the PPP, Sindh government and Karachi. “Karachi is the biggest city, capital of Sindh and it runs the entire country, we know all this. You hide even your biggest disasters from the media while the smallest story about Sindh [is highlighted],” he continued. CM Murad acknowledged that the “condition got bad” in Karachi during the recent rains after which the talk of usurping Sindh’s powers started, but added that things were probably worse in other parts of the country where it also rained. “The PPP invested in Karachi over the last 10 years which is why its condition was better,” he said. “All over the world, if the capacity of storm-water drains is less than the rainfall, then problems arise. We have additional problems [in Karachi], there is no disagreement on that.
Missing rights activist Sarang Joyo returns home KARACHI STAFF REPORT
Human rights activist Sarang Joyo returned to his home in Karachi late Sunday night, a week after he reportedly went missing, his father, Taj Joyo, confirmed. Joyo, a well-known Sindhi writer, said “unknown people had dropped” his son off at Sohrab Goth around 1:00 am, adding that Sarang had then come home in a taxi. Sarang, 34, is a research associate at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) in Karachi. According to his father, Sarang was leading the Sindh Sujagi Forum to highlight Sindh’s issues like repatriation of Afghan refugees from the province, 2017 census and enforced
disappearances among others. He went missing after leaving his residence in Akhtar Colony, Karachi, at midnight intervening Aug 10 and 11. The Joyo family believes he was picked up by unknown security personnel. Taj added that on return, his son was tired and did not feel well, upon which the family called a private doctor to check on him. “The doctor advised him to rest,” he said. Taj, who is in Islamabad to attend a Senate committee meeting today on enforced disappearances said Sarang would perhaps narrate what happened to him later. He questioned who would “compensate the physical and mental damages which Sarang Joyo suffered”. He added that he would present his stance in writing before the Senate committee and demand that all missing persons be released.
Shehbaz, Maryam summoned in 4,000 acres of land encroachment case LAHORE TLTP
A civil court on Monday summoned Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif and Vice-President Maryam Nawaz to appear before it in a case against them for allegedly encroaching upon 4,000 acres of land in Jati Umra. Senior Civil Judge Fozia Saira, hearing an application filed by Punjab University Professor Dr Abdul Rauf, directed both of them to turn up on August 20. The applicant alleged that the Sharif family has encroached upon his forefathers’ thousands of acres of land in Jati Umra which they had purchased from the then government from 1911 to 1912.
The actual owner of the land in question, Pir Buksh, is still alive, he said. Rauf claimed that he had documentary evidence that can be made part of the court’s proceedings and pleaded with the judge to issue directives for removal of encroachment from the land. He further demanded that the Sharif family should pay a sum of Rs50 billion as financial damages he suffered because of the illegal occupation of the land. It is pertinent to mention here that Maryam is facing a land acquisition inquiry instituted by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for allegedly acquiring 200 hundred acres of land in Raiwind in 2013 in violation of rules.
Senate body to move privilege motion against NAB chief ISLAMABAD INP
Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights has decided to move a privilege motion against National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Justice (r) Javed Iqbal as he did not present himself
before the committee despite being summoned in relation to the cases of missing persons. Standing Committee Chairman Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar stated that the NAB chief had been called for a briefing due to his capacity as the chairman of the Missing Persons Commission. He said that the IG Sindh attended
the meeting but Justice (r) Iqbal did not. According to the registrar, the NAB chief could not attend the meeting because of health concerns. The registrar also said that he could not come for security reasons due to former President Asif Ali Zardari’s NAB court hearing. It is understandable that the NAB chief could
not attend due to his health, however security reasons due to Asif Ali Zardari’s summoning and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) are not fathomable and justified, he added. Senator Khokhar said that the Standing Committee has decided on proceeding with a privilege motion in the parliament against the NAB chief.
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pML-n’s hanif abbasi appears before nab in sports board punjab case LAHORE INP
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Hanif Abbasi on Monday appeared before National Accountability Bureau (NAB) team for investigation in an alleged corruption case related to Sports Board Punjab. Sources claimed that Abbasi failed to satisfy NAB during the investigation. Talking to media, after showing up before NAB, Hanif Abbasi said he was asked to answer 20 questions and criticised NAB’s questionnaire. Abbasi claimed he was asked not to return back to Pakistan while being in Medina, and vowed not to leave former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his party. The PML-N stalwart said that he has been asked to appear before the NAB again on August 27. The bureau is probing Abbasi in an alleged corruption case related to the Sports Board Punjab. A notice sent earlier by NAB reads: “The inquiry proceedings have revealed that you are in possession of information/evidence which relates to the commission of the said offence. You are advised that failure to comply with this notice may entail penal consequences as provided in Section 2 of the schedule of National Accountability Ordinance 1999.”
nab files reference against hamza in money laundering case LAHORE STAFF REPORT
National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Monday filed a reference against Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz (PML-N) Vice President Hamza Shahbaz in the money laundering case against the family of National Assembly Opposition Leader Shahbaz Sharif. NAB alleged that assets to the tune of Rs3.3 billion had been identified so far as illegally accumulated by Hamza, his brother Suleman Shabaz and their father Shahbaz. It said the whole family committed massive money laundering in the name of foreign remittances and loans. According to details, the reference was registered at the office of the accountability court’s admin judge. In October 2019, accountability court judge Ameer Mohammad Khan had declared Suleman a proclaimed offender and issued his fresh non-bailable warrants on agency’s request after the bureau informed the court that all of Suleman’s properties had already been seized as per the court’s earlier order.
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Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
NEWS
indian atroCitieS leading to indigenouS exPloSion within iok: maSood MUZAFFARABAD
a
TLTP
ZAD Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan has said that response of world forums, notably of the United Nations, to ongoing settler-colonisation of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) remains guarded and cautious. “The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, have made some helpful statements but that is not enough,” he wrote in an article published by Hilal magazine of Pakistan Army. The AJK president said that against the backdrop of the ghastly crimes being committed and the ongoing genocide entering the penultimate phase of extermination, an indigenous explosion within IOK, not “abetted” by Pakistan, cannot be ruled out. “The asphyxiating choke-hold in the territory is unbearable. The dead are dead, but the living are also dead. They see no choice but to reclaim their homeland,” he maintained. “To turn the tide in the coming months, we will have to close our ranks and convert the liberty of Kashmir into an intentional movement and take it to multilateral fo-
rums without feeling discouraged by their apathy and expediency,” he said. “We should remain persistent in knocking on their doors until they open them and hear us out. The UN Security Council must be coaxed, goaded and pushed to create conditions for the implementation of its own resolutions on Kashmir or to start a fresh round of consultations under Chapters VI and VII of the Charter,” he added. Insisting that bilateralism has failed to
Punjab may reopen schools in two shifts: minister LAHORE TLTP
Punjab Education Minister Murad Raas on Monday dropped a hint at the reopening of schools in two shifts across the province from September 15. “We are mulling for reopening of schools in two shifts as it would be better for children”, the minister said in his statement. The provincial education minister said that standard operating procedures (SOPs) will be finalised in a meeting with the school owners and added that the final decision about reopening of schools in Punjab will be taken in the first week of September. Earlier this week, it was decided that the educational institutions in the country would reopen from September 15. Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood had chaired a meeting of all education ministers which finalised that the schools and universities would resume classes from next month. Last week, Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani had warned against early reopening of educational institutions in the province. In a statement, Saeed Ghani had termed the private schools association’s decision about reopening educational institutions tantamount to challenge the writ of the government.
Sindh minister orders action against schools violating closure orders KARACHI INP
Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani on Monday took notice of early reopening of educational institutions in the metropolis and directed authorities concerned to suspend the registration of schools that violated closure orders. The provincial education minister took strict notice of reopening of schools in several areas of Karachi and issued directives to secretary education and director-general private schools. “The private schools association’s decision about reopening of educational institutions tantamount to challenge the writ of the government,” he said in a statement. The minister directed concerned district commissioners to take strict measures against the administration of schools defying government orders. “No one would be allowed to play with lives of children,” added Saeed Ghani.
resolve the Kashmir issue, President Masood said Kashmir is neither a territorial dispute nor a barter of chattel, so the myth that Kashmir is a bilateral issue must be shattered. “The fate of 14 million Kashmiris is at stake. In this context, we will continue to work on influential parliaments whose weight will be felt by the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council. Equally important, in this context, is the international civil society, which now de-
termines, for instance, the fate of fossil fuel and how societies should redesign a safe and secure global ecosystem. It can be a powerful voice on Kashmir,” he went on to say. The AJK president said that the 10 million strong Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora community, along with its growing network has adequate political influence and economic clout to shape public opinion and tilt the balance towards the truth and the restitution of the rights of the Kashmiris. We will continue to leverage their strengths. “In order to explode the false narratives about Kashmir woven and peddled by India to the world, we would continue to take our true, genuine narrative to the world forums and the international community. Our efforts should not be confined to the traditional and new media but to the outlets where critical thinking is nurtured and to the portals of new technologies,” he wrote in the article. Stressing the need for passing the baton of leadership to the younger generation – both men and women, the AJK president said, “Youth will have a crucial role in shaping our future and they are already giving their blood in Kashmir. They must be made part of political and diplomatic campaigns and outreach.”
KP building consensus to enact domestic violence & child marriage restraint bills, says Sultan PESHAWAR TLTP
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Law Minister, Sultan Mohammad Khan said on Monday that the government is trying to build consensus for the enactment of domestic violence bill and child marriage restraint bill, which will be two landmark laws in the history of the province. The provincial law minister was addressing the launching ceremony of a report titled ‘Gap Analysis of Legislation related to Ending Violence Against Women (EVAW).’ The report was launched by Women Parliamentary Caucus Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (WPC-KP) and UN Women Pakistan to provide an in-depth analysis of the normative, implementation and monitoring gaps in the legislative framework of the province and to identify and document gaps in the existing provincial legal framework and implementation process. The gap analysis report has been designed and commissioned by UN Women Pakistan in partnership with Women Parliamentary Caucus KP with the financial support of UK Aid. The virtual launch was attended by the provincial parliamentarians, members of WPC, government officials, representatives of civil society organizations, media, academia, legal community and people from all walks of life. Sultan Mohammad Khan recounted the achievements of the government of KP related to pro-women legislative reforms over the years. He specifically highlighted government’s success in the amendment and implementation of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Protection of Women against Harassment at Workplace Act 2010, and the appointment of renowned social activist Rukhshanda Naz as the provin-
cial ombudsperson for protection against harassment of women at workplace. The starting point for this report has been contextualizing EVAW laws within the framework of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and Pakistan’s other international commitments. The document substantiates and builds on previous bodies of work and adopts a holistic approach in identifying gaps and proposing recommendations for EVAW related legislation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In her welcome address, General Secretary WPC-KP Ayesha Bano said, “The commitment of the KP government to the cause of women’s rights is evident by the initiatives undertaken to implement Pakistan’s international commitments at the provincial level. In order to eliminate gender-based discrimination and safeguard the interests of women and girls, WPC-KP, in partnership with UN Women Pakistan, is working for enactment and implementation of women-related legislation – aligned with Pakistan’s national and international commitments – in the province.” “The Gap Analysis Report of Laws relating to EVAW will create a better understanding of the legislative framework which will in turn support the enactment and implementation of effective and inclusive legislation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” she remarked. KPCSW Chairperson Dr Riffat Sardar appreciated the concerted efforts of KP’s women machinery and the commitment of WPC and UN Women to end discrimination and violence against women in the province. She said that KPCSW was committed to connect all stakeholders including government, civil society, women parliamentarians, entrepreneurs, civil society and communities in efforts to improve the status of women in KP.
Sialkot man killS 16-year-old daughter for ‘honour’ SIALKOT: A man, identified as Isaaq, allegedly killed his 16-year-old daughter and her friend in the name of honour in Sialkot’s Pasrur, according to the police. The victims were attacked Monday afternoon with a sharp knife and died on the spot. The police reached the crime scene and arrested the suspect. The bodies have been shifted to the DHQ Hospital for post-mortem examinations. A case has been registered against the suspect, three of his sons and two other unknown men. All of them except Isaaq are on the run. The police are on the lookout for the suspects. INP
atC orders transfer of uzair Baloch to mitharam hostel KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court on Monday ordered transfer of Lyari gang war kingpin Uzair Baloch to Mitharam Hostel detention facility. The court granted a petition filed by Abid Zaman Advocate on behalf of his client Uzair Jan Baloch. The court issued orders for transfer of Baloch to the Mitharam Hostel, which should be declared a sub-jail. The ATC also said that the jail superintendent is bound to provide all basic facilities to the accused. Uzair Baloch, in his petition complained that adequate facilities were not available to him at Karachi’s Central Jail. “I do not even have a razor to shave,” he said. Baloch said that he asked jail authorities to provide him a nail cutter but they did not. “I should be provided basic facilities such as razor and nail cutter,” he added. Uzair Baloch has been accused of committing 198 murders during the Lyari gang war. Baloch was arrested by the Rangers on January 30, 2016. In April 2017, his custody was handed over to the Pakistan Army after he was accused of espionage. The Army handed him over to the police on April 6, 2020 after three years. INP
Qatar wants more investments in Pakistan, ambassador tells fm ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that Pakistan and Qatar have deep-rooted fraternal relations, which further strengthen in the days ahead. The foreign minister was talking to Qatari Ambassador to Pakistan Sheikh Saud Abdul Rehman Al-Thani on Monday. Qureshi congratulated the ambassador on assuming his responsibilities and assured him of the ministry’s cooperation and support. Ambassador Saoud conveyed warm greetings from the Qatari leadership to the Pakistani leadership. He discussed Qatar’s plan to enhance bilateral cooperation in myriad fields and undertake educational projects in Pakistan. He also conveyed Qatar’s interest in enhanced investments in Pakistan. Qureshi appreciated the measures taken by Qatar to curtail the spread of Covid-19 and reduce its impact. While appreciating the close fraternal ties between Pakistan and Qatar, the foreign minister discussed ways and means for enhancing the existing economic cooperation, investment in food security and other sectors. TLTP
Murad Saeed inaugurates GIS to increase NHA revenue ISLAMABAD TLTP Minister for Communications and Postal Services Murad Saeed Monday inaugurated Geographic Information System (GIS) of National Highway Authority. Addressing the inaugural ceremony, the minister said that the project aims to bring transparency to the NHA and improve the condition of roads. Saeed said that in order to enhance revenue, the National Highway Authority has initiated the project of GIS Survey and development of geo database of its entire network. The project will enable NHA to digitise the complete information regarding utilities and commercial amenities in the Right of Way (ROW) of NHA network. He said that Affairs of the NHA are being run in a transparent manner and the
process of making the Authority financially independent is in progress. He added that the GIS survey will enable NHA to manage and monitor commercial and noncommercial amenities all along the NHA network, which will eventually lead to increased Authority’ s revenue at large. Referring to the government achievements, Saeed said that in July, there was a marked increase in the foreign exchange. He said that the Bus Rapid Transit project has been inaugurated in Peshawar and the coronavirus pandemic has largely been controlled. He also said that positive indicators of the Pakistan Stock Exchange, increase in foreign exchange reserves and other economic indicators suggest that Pakistan is on the right track. He further said that development of backward areas is the top priority of the government. “We are also focusing to ensure
transparency in the institutions,” he added. The minister said that agreement with IPPs will provide relief to people. Under the countrywide Ehsas programme, steps are underway for welfare and betterment of the poor, he added. He also said that NHA has planned to undertake eight projects this year which include Balkasar-Mainwali-Muzaffarabad Highway, Karachi-QuettaChaman Highway, Barakahu and Shahdara Flyover, Shikarpur-Rajanpur Highway, Zhob-Kuchlak Highway, Kararo-Wadh Highway, Lodhran-Multan and Chakdara-Chitral Highway. The present government, he added, will build more roads and will also focus on promotion of tourism that will generate employment opportunities. Through Business Plan, NHA is endeavoring to enhance its revenue that will help reduce load on national exchequer, he further said.
Speaking on the occasion, Federal Secretary Communications Zafar Hasan said through GIS survey of Right of Way, NHA is being made a model for other institutes of the country. For this purpose, cooperation of SPARCO is being obtained and the NHA’s assets will be managed and supervised in a better way under this system, he added. NHA Chairman Captain (r) Sikander Qayyum said that as per the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan and guidance of Saeed, the NHA has been taken on the track of self-reliance and transparency. During the last two years, all the set goals were achieved successfully in a record time frame and NHA is ready for more challenges.
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
neWs zardari, gilani to be indicted in toshakhana reference next month CONTINuED frOM pAgE 01 It further states that Zardari accepted and received the armoured vehicles as a gift from the United Arab Emirates (BMW750 Li model 2005, Lexus Jeep model 2007) and from Libya (BMW 760 Li model 2008) in September-October 2008. It was obligated to immediately report and deposit the vehicles with Toshakhana of Cabinet Division but he neither reported the gifted vehicles nor despoiled the same. The nAB reference alleges that Sharif did not hold any public office in 2008. However, from April to December 2008 without giving any application or request to then prime minister Gillani dishonestly and illegally obtained relaxation for his benefits of the procedure for the vide Cabinet Division’s above said Memorandum which expressly stipulate that vehicles shall not be allowed to be purchased by the recipients and be given to the Central Pool of cars of the Cabinet Division. “nawaz Sharif knowingly and with dishonest intention obtained illegal favour in connivance with the then prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani by obtaining the relaxation of said procedure for the acceptance and disposal of gifts,” reference states. The nAB investigation has accused these public figures of having committed the offence of corruption and being involved in corrupt practices defined under various sections of nAB. The agency has requested the court to conduct a trial and sentence the accused to the strictest possible jail terms under the nAB Ordinance for their involvement in the corruption scam.
CM Buzdar says CoMMitted to faCilitating industrialists, traders LAHOrE TLTP
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UnJAB Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar has said that the provincial government is committed to providing 'ease of business' to the industrialists and traders. The chief minister said this while inaugurating One-Window Smart Service Centre at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry (LCCI) on Monday. The CM inspected the facilities being provided there and lauded the initiative of unifying all facilities in Smart Service Centre, terming the establishment of the one-window facility as a 'welcoming step to create ease of doing business'. LCCI President Irfan Iqbal Sheikh briefed the CM about the facilities being provided in the One-Window Smart Cen-
tre. Later, while addressing the business community, Usman Buzdar recognised LCCI as the first chamber that has taken lead in setting up smart service centre, urging other chambers of commerce & industry to follow suit. He noted that LCCI had also come forward to lend support for the management of Covid-19 crisis by donating in the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. "Owing to the government’s prudent measures, we have now come back to the pre-corona situation,” he maintained. He said issues pertaining to inspection in the industries are currently under process and would to be resolved soon, adding that focal persons would be deputed in the concerned departments to facilitate industrialists and traders. He said that only three special economic zones had been established across the country in the last 70 years, whereas 13 SEZ have become functional in the two
years. Buzdar said that approval for necessary amendments in the Rules of Business has been given to empower the Southern Punjab Secretariat. He claimed that the law and order of Punjab is far better than other provinces, and that the scope of model policing will be extended to other cities as well. He said the government is giving 575 new vehicles to the police; 45 new police stations are being constructed and land is being provided for 101 police stations. Working environment in the police department is being improved, he added. He further disclosed that work would soon be initiated on the construction of a new parking plaza in Lahore. He said that the PTI government has laid the foundation of the River Ravi Urban Development Project, completion of which would greatly help in reducing pollution.
Pakistan’s July remittances surge to record $2.76bn CONTINuED frOM pAgE 01 The loss in jobs means that workers are prepared to return home. The implications are that workers are sending home their ‘bulk savings’ as they wind up, according to Tahir Abbas, head of research at Arif Habib Ltd. This represents a “higher one-time repatriation of cash”, according to Hashmi. One can see this trend reflected not just in Pakistan’s data, but also other countries that have a significant labour force in the Middle East, such as Bangladesh. The country saw a similarly high jump in remittances to $2.59 billion in July 2020, or up 62.5pc from a year earlier and 42.1pc from the previous month, according to data from the Bangladesh Bank. Finally, there are minor reasons that some analysts say may have also played a part in the rise of remittances. There has been a rise in inflows due to money being sent home for Eid. Additionally, Pakistan
has recently announced a tax amnesty in the construction sector, which may also have boosted funds being sent home. Change in SBP reCording: In the press statement, the SBP noted that compilation for ‘country-wise’ workers has changed. From July 2020 onwards, remittances are recorded from the source country, not the routing country. Data on workers’ remittances is collected on a monthly basis from banks, exchange companies and the Pakistan Post Office. In a note issued by the statistics department of the SBP, the central bank said that in their submissions to partner banks in Pakistan, some of the money transfer companies and overseas banks had been reporting the country location of their head offices as the origin of the remittance, instead of the country of residence of the remitter from which their subsidiaries had originally collected the remittance. “While this does not affect the overall
Weekly inflation drops 0.22pc ISLAMABAD APP
The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation for the week ended August 13, for the combined consumption group, witnessed a decrease of 0.22 per cent as compared to the previous week. The SPI for the week under review in the above-mentioned group was recorded at 133.94 points compared to 134.23 points registered in the previous week, according to the latest data issued by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics
(PBS). As compared to the corresponding week of last year, the SPI for the combined consumption group in the week under review witnessed an increase of 7.01 per cent. The weekly SPI with base year 2015-16 covers 17 urban centers and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups. The SPI for the lowest consumption group up to Rs17,732 witnessed a 0.06 per cent decrease from 140.40 points in the last week to 140.32 points during the week under review. Meanwhile, SPI for the consumption groups from Rs17,732 to Rs22,888, Rs22,889 to Rs29,517, Rs29,518
level of remittances arriving in Pakistan, it does affect the allocation of remittances by source country,” the central bank said. This has led to a change in data on countries’ shares of remittances. For instance, under the new data, many analysts noted that remittances from Saudi Arabia had jumped to $821.6 million in July 2020, or a year-on-year growth of 74.5pc. On the other hand, remittances from the US, Abu Dhabi, and Malaysia had shown significant year-on-year decreases of 22.6pc, 39.2pc and 86.1pc respectively. This does not mean that remittances from those countries had actually fallen; just that allocation has changed. The central bank stressed that the revised country shares under the improved data do not necessarily imply that remittances from one country have increased over another. Instead they demonstrate that the source country of remittances is being recorded more accurately now.
to Rs44,175, Rs29,518 to Rs44,175 and above Rs44,175 per month also decreased by 0.12 per cent, 0.15 per cent; 0.20 per cent and 0.26 per cent respectively. During the week, prices of 13 items decreased, prices of 15 items increased while prices of 23 items remained constant. The items, which recorded a decrease in their average prices include chicken, tomatoes, banana, moong pulse, eggs, firewood, potatoes, mash pulse, LPG cylinder, loose and tinned vegetable ghee, loose cooking oil and masoor pulse. The commodities, which recorded an increase in their average prices include onions, bread, sugar, mustard oil, basmati broken rice, garlic, gram pulse, energy saver, fresh milk, wheat flour, curd, gur and cooked beef.
gen Bajwa meets saudi counterpart during fence-mending visit CONTINuED frOM pAgE 01 Qureshi had said that Pakistan had skipped the Kuala Lumpur Summit last December on Saudi Arabia’s request and now Pakistani Muslims were demanding Riyadh “show leadership on the issue”. “We have our own sensitivities. You have to realise this. Gulf countries should understand this,” the foreign minister had said, adding that he could no more indulge in diplomatic niceties. He had made it clear that he was not being emotional and fully understood the implications of his statement. “It is right, I am taking a position despite our good ties with Saudi Arabia,” he said. The Foreign Office (FO) had later defended the minister’s remarks, saying his was a reflection of people’s aspirations and expectations from the OIC to raise the Kashmir issue internationally. Speaking at a weekly press briefing, the FO spokesperson had said that the people of Pakistan had more expectations from the OIC and would like it to play a leading role in raising the Kashmir issue internationally. SaUdi enVoY CaLLS on SenaTe ChairMan: Earlier in the day, Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani reiterated Islamabad’s full support for Riyadh and vowed to stand by the Kingdom during a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Pakistan nawaf bin Said Al-Malki. “Pakistani parliament, especially the upper house [Senate], reiterates its commitment that no sacrifice will be spared for defending the sanctity of Haramain,” a statement issued by Sanjrani’s office said, adding that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia “have always stood by each other in difficult times.” The two officials also discussed other bilateral and regional issues, with Sanjrani saying they would “work in consultation on international issues and problems” as well. “Pakistan can never forget Saudi Arabia’s support in every challenging time. We hope that Saudi Arabia will continue to cooperate in the same spirit,” he said.
youth from Bhakkar jumps over 12 motorcycles, arif Magsi’s record broken NEWS DESK Dilawar Baloch, a resident of Behl nasheeb area of Bhakkar, showcased his talent by establishing a record of jumping over 12 motorcycles as the record was previously held by Arif Magsi who had jumped over 11 motorcycles, a local news channel reported on Monday. The news channel further reported that the residents of the area gave a crash prize to Dilawar Baloch for his heroics.
Liquor licences and wheelies CITY NOTES M A NIAZI
I wonder if Maryam nawaz’s supporters, who protested outside the nAB offices, according to some, and fought with the police, according to others, were stone-cold sober. Or whether the objection was not so much to the summons or the charge. She was charged with illegally acquiring land. nAB nominated 88 Pakistan Muslim League-nawaz (PML-n) leaders in the First Information Report (FIR) and said that 300 unidentified persons were also involved. That’s probably in case they remember any more persons they want to name. Her husband, Captain (r) Safdar, promptly filed a counter-FIR, which accused the nAB officials of attempting to damage her vehicle and attempting to attack her, using clubs first, and then water cannon, batons, and firing. This, he said, was done by a conspiracy of the prime minister, the PM’s Adviser on Accountability Shehzad Akbar, the nAB chief, and the nAB Lahore DG. The FIR had one defect. It left out nawaz Sharif. Maybe some nAB official will remember his presence later and nominate him, leaving behind 299 unidentified persons. And the counter-FIR left out Usman Buzdar. But then, Buzdar is at the root of the
PML-n’s disaffection, but he could claim that as a defense. You see, nAB wants him too, because of a liquor licence he allocated. now, Prime Minister Imran Khan may have a liberal attitude to psychotropic substances, but he has a very puritan attitude towards liquor. So the possibility of Buzdar awarding a licence is accompanied by disturbing ideas of his imbibing some of the stuff. So it is in bad taste to circulate rumors that he staggered into nAB Lahore headquarters, with a paper bag under his arm, which he left behind for his interrogators, who were heard laughing uncontrollably when he left, while one of them staggered out of the interrogation room to throw up on one of the ornamental bushes outside. now, why could not they get Maryam on a charge like that, asking her to produce the evidence? Imran is going easy on Buzdar. For example, his praise for the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) is to be explained by its not being called the Metro. Buzdar seems to have earned a reprieve from the task of pulling down the Lahore Metro, now that Imran has declared the Peshawar BRT kosher. That’s how Imran seems to do things: Call things by another name. For example, do not call it a ‘lockdown.’ And do not say ‘free-for-all’ but ‘smart lockdown.’ I wonder how he feels about US President Donald Trump’s calling for the reopening of
football. Independence Day came again, and it seems better sense is prevailing, and there’s no one dying while doing a wheelie. It seems that the young bloods of Lahore have found a subtler way of gaining independence from living. The eagerness of celebration meant not just an abandonment of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and social distancing,
CMYK
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but an almost deliberate tearing them into shreds. One can only hope that these young blades will survive to see in the new Year, which they do on their motorbikes, but with silencers off, and jacket pockets filled with crackers, which they then throw into any car windows they might find open. I suppose they’re lucky in the US that our young bucks are not over there because
I am sure they would be Trump supporters complete with Confederate-flag tattoos, riding bikes and throwing crackers into cars carrying Democrat campaign stickers. They would probably have thrown a cracker or two into Senator Kamala Harris’ car, not just because she had been chosen by Joe Biden as Democrat candidate for vice-president, but because she was a woman of color. Trump’s reaction was to throw some doubt on her eligibility. Just as he expressed doubt about Barack Obama’s eligibility because he was the son of an immigrant. Senator Harris has got immigrants on both sides, her father being a Jamaican black, and her mother a South Indian. Trump himself has got all four grandparents migrating from Germany. But the point that Trump is making is that Black Americans, or indeed any Americans of color, can’t be real, or eligible to be president (or vice-president, for that matter). Palestinians are completely cut off. Trump is saying that those who were born in the US cannot be president. Then the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced it would be recognising Israel. So Palestinians who have made it to the US because their home had been taken over, cannot make it to the US presidency. Seems unfair, somehow. If Trump can become US president, why not a Palestinian? Well, if you look at the founders of the US, you do not see any Palestinians. Just a lot of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men. Like Trump. And a lot of them were slave-owners. And none of the rest would have been very active in the Black Lives Matter movement if it had started then.
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
06 COMMENT
Issues of our economy
Two years of PTI’s rule Dangers of making opposition desperate
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T is incorrect to blame coronavirus alone for the country’s economic woes. Thanks the PTI’s incompetence in handling the economy during its first year in office, fiscal deficit in first three quarters peaked to five per cent of GDP as expenditures broke past records and revenue performance was the lowest almost in a decade. Last year imports shrank, exports stagnated, and FDI plummeted. This year PTI’s inability to comprehend the ways the hoarders and smugglers manipulate the prices in Pakistan led to rise in the prices of wheat, sugar and most of the commodities of daily use. What was left was accomplished by coronavirus Coronavirus entered Pakistan through Iran due to the failure to arrange proper quarantine facilities in Taftan. A government out to please the religious lobby then allowed the Tablighi Jamaat to hold its multinational gathering in Raiwind thus further facilitating the spread of virus. The permissions given during Ramzan and Eid spread the pandemic all over the country. It goes to the government’s credit though that it has managed to bring down the number of positive cases and the death rate. Its failure to impose the SOPs and leaving everything to the people’s choice can again multiply infections. The government has to learn from other countries who after remaining coronavirus free for weeks are witnessing a spike in it Unemployment on a massive scale not seen before combined with a spike in the prices of commodities of everyday use can act as a tinderbox. Kashmir issue has been mishandled. Instead of raising the issue at world forums and international think tanks and displaying films about atrocities in IHK, PTI confined itself this year to holding walks in Pakistan and preaching to those at home who are already converted. FM Qureshi’s indiscreet remarks regarding Saudi Arabia have created a problem for Pakistan. The PTI has continued its policy of persecuting the opposition leaders through NAB. It has also bypassed the parliament to rule through ordinances; 33 this year compared to 6 last year. The PTI MNAs generally respond with personal attacks instead of giving convincing answers to those criticizing government policies. This is making the opposition restive which can confine itself to parliament or take to the streets. Much will depend on the PTI’s behavior.
Damage done by decades of mismanagement cannot be fixed overnight Mohib AsAd
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read economics at the Government College Lahore in the early 1960s.The head of the Department of Economics was the stylish Dr Muhammad Anwar with the doctorate from the University of Oxford. He was also an economic advisor to the Government of Pakistan. We adored and idolized him, bless his soul. His lectures were short, simple, and thought-challenging. He would then give us an open-ended Q&A session. The discussion which followed engendered in me and many others, a life-long romance with Economics as a discipline. A whole generation of Old Ravians was affectionately nurtured by such teachers. It was staff of their ilk which made the old GC Lahore the premier college in the subcontinent. We spent weeks talking about Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’ widely agreed as the Magnus Opus of Economics; Jeremy Bentham’s essays; those by John Stuart Mill; the letters of Ricardo. And then there was John Maynard Keynes, the unquestioned lion of 20th Century Economics. These masters were succeeded by the modern economists who created various algorithms, importing mathematics into the subject, and all of it for poverty reduction and better economic management. Economics has evolved into a science. Recall that the 1960s was the golden decade of economic growth in Pakistan. It was a group of men like Dr Anwar who sat in the Planning Commission off and on and formulated our ‘five year plans’ which we abandoned in the 1970s and which South Korea adopted. Look where the two nations stand today. We lost our way somewhere down the line, by nationalization, by takeovers of banks by government, weakening the civil service, by an overall elite capture of the wealth of this nation by the successive sets of oligarchs. In return, the country has been on the verge of default fifteen times—bailed out by the IMF each time. Noam Chomsky, the American activist said somewhere that there is no such thing as a ’poor nation’ except for that whose resources have been used unwisely by the rulers. How fitting for Pakistan.
Taking things lightly A second wave of the Coronavirus cannot be ruled out
Extensive reforms required
dr Alon ben-Meir
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vEN a cursory review of our prison system reveals the outrageous inhumanity to which hundreds of thousands of prisoners, especially young adults, are subjected to, many of whom are imprisoned for non-violent crimes, sometimes for life. Some of the cases I came across are simply heart wrenching, bringing tears to my eyes. The over-policing of America, which results in the disproportionate incarceration of people of color, and the numerous flaws in the judicial system, most particularly highlighted in sentencing disparities by race and class, and habitual offender (aka three-strikes) laws, have contributed greatly to the travesty of the American prison system. It is time for the whole country to demand extensive prison reforms and remove the stigma of the current prison system that dishonors America and puts it to shame. Indeed, the state of our prison system is bewildering and most alarming. The US population of over 330 million is 4.25 percent of the total world population, but its prison population of nearly 2.3 million people is approximately 20 percent of the global prison population. Indeed, the US prisoner rate is 698 per 100,000 people — the highest rate in the world. If each US state were its own country, no other country would rank in the top 10 countries for rates of incarceration, nor in the top 20 or 30 – the next highest is El Salvador, 33rd on the list compared
Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami
Arif Nizami Editor Umar Aziz
Asher John
Joint Editor
Executive Editor
Deputy Editor
Lahore – Ph: 042-36300938, 042-36375965
Mohib Asad is a freelance columnist
America’s prisons are outrageously unjust
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FFICIAL coronavirus statistics being reported by the government are encouraging as yesterday saw the lowest number of deaths, six, since April, which was when the pandemic had started gaining steam, to peak in mid-June. While there is justified skepticism over official figures released by the Federal government, the fact that both private and public hospitals are no longer overburdened by Covid-19 patients, rather their capacities have increased, is an undeniable indicator of things getting better. The PTI government, post-Eidul Azha, opened up the country with the exception of schools and marriage halls that are due to be opened next month. All this has been done with the issuance of SOPs that the citizenry has to follow. Unfortunately this is not happening as people are not even taking basic precautions such as wearing masks in public and avoiding unnecessary contact. A dangerous level of complacency has now set in and the more things inch towards normalcy the more there is a feeling that the pandemic perhaps never happened and has simply disappeared from the country. It is up to the government to remedy this and the only way it can do this is to strictly enforce SOPs that it has issued. Mask wearing in countries like the US and the UK has been made mandatory and has to be enforced in order to be effective. Simply instructing the people to do something without enforcing it through monitoring and perhaps even punitive action such as fines will not garner the desired results. That so many countries, having gotten the pandemic under control by flattening the curve have witnessed a sudden resurgence in confirmed cases, should serve as a lesson to countries like Pakistan where the virus has receded but can reemerge owing to lax controls. New Zealand, which handled the virus through a 51 – day curfew-like lockdown, got a hold of the situation quick. But with 29 new cases emerging recently, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is taking no chances and has locked down the country again while also delaying the country’s general elections till at least October. There are plenty of other examples of countries suffering a second wave after either lifting restrictions too quickly or not making sure people are staying safe or both. Pakistan has a good opportunity at the moment to implement a campaign ensuring a strict adherence to SOPs in order to avoid a second wave and save precious lives. It will only have itself to blame if the worst were to happen.
Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad
For the very first time, Pakistan has an economist as a Prime Minister, as Imran Khan holds a degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) from Oxford University. I would like to remind him of a fellow Oxonian called Jeremy Bentham whose entire philosophy was based on “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong” Let’s see how much ‘right’ the PM leaves as his legacy. Back track to Pro Anwar and the beloved GC Lahore. Till the 19th century there were four ‘factors of production’ which need to be developed wisely to generate wealth. The first is land. It’s a natural resource and includes all riches over and underneath. Arable land produces food, fruit, flowers and other flora; it nourishes livestock and wildlife, and a large variety of fauna; it gives space for abodes, roads, and suchlike man-made structures; it hosts rivers, lakes, snow, and suchlike phenomena; it contains minerals and gas plus large reservoirs of water besides a whole world of life in the form of roots and animals. Land is a wondrous gift to us—-to be used for the short duration that we live on it. (We delude ourselves into thinking that we own it.) The second economic factor is termed as labor. It is the total population which populates the land. It includes all genders and ages. The optimum output needs to be maximized by good health, high skills and competitive attitudes. The overall robustness of the citizen reflects the collective strength of a nation. The third factor is raw material, both indigenous and imported. For a prosperous country, all its raw material potential needs to be researched, catalogued, and exploited in a micro-managed manner. The fourth factor of economic development is an intangible termed ‘entrepreneurship’. It is the innate genius of the public and private sectors to organize, create, and distribute goods and services which together make up the wealth of that particular nation. Classical economics stayed with these four factors of economic development till the advent of the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18th Century. After that, the role of the government started to
gain more and more importance. By the middle of the 19th century and the advent of the nation-state, government became the main engine of economic management by exercising powers of control over who does what, when and how. The quality of this management made some countries richer than others and thus politically more dominant over the poorer. Economic philosophy models like the laissez-faire, communism, socialism, and populism have been tried and even today exist in one form or another in different countries across the globe. The jury is out on which be the best system on the Bentham scale. Over the last seventy years, Pakistan has been ruled by leaders who have completely failed to generate public trust. Their image among the ‘khalq-eKhuda’ is mud. They are seen as marauding raiders, who make huge fortunes by white-collar crime committed on the national exchequer and then scoot off to live in foreign countries which welcome them for the funds they bring in. Their modus operandi is so well known that it does not merit discussion in this write-up. So the citizen, who, by the way, is much more informed than popular belief, feels cheated and hits back by cheating on levied taxes. Thus, Pakistan, which is intrinsically a very rich country, is now over eighty percent a ‘cash economy’. It is due to this economic structure that we are quickly bouncing back from the effects of Covid-19 much faster than many developed nations in the west. Further deregulation of the economy can be a shot in the arm. Imran Khan inherited a system where the administrative institutions had been destroyed under a carefully crafted assault by corruption-saturated political bigwigs. So his first strategy should have been to repair the machine, and then go for the mafias. What he did was issue dire threats of sending all thieves to hell and beyond; he did this on a daily basis. What he did not count was that besides the few thousand big robbers who were his real nemesis, there are millions of Pakistanis who add to the prosperity of the country by promoting velocity of circulation of tax-unpaid cash. The PM’s diatribes sent all into deep freeze, stalling growth. It is only now that the government has realized this serious lapse. Course correction is on the way. Right-thinking and informed Pakistanis are looking up to another ‘decade of development’ under Imran Khan’s watch. But for that he has to sort out the courts which are deaf to the Khalq e Khuda, and listening to salacious arguments of glibtongued lawyers. Best of luck to the skipper in thishis first innings!!!
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to individual US states. In 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that as high as 40 percent of prisoners should not be in prison—”behind bars with no compelling public safety reason.” There are literally thousands of young prisoners, Black and white, who are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for non-violent offences. It is unfathomable that we as a society are spending billions of dollars every year to sustain such pointless cruelty, to inflict needless pain on individuals, fathers and mothers, who pose no threat at all to the public. One such excruciatingly painful case was reported on by the ACLU in 2013. Rayvell Finch was arrested in Louisiana at age 22 for trespassing; a search of his person uncovered heroin, for which its possession he was convicted of in 1997. He was never accused of distribution, yet was sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole under Louisiana’s habitual offender statute, as he had two prior ‘strikes’ against him (possession of stolen property in 1993, and possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine in 1994). He was only 23 years old when he received a life sentence—the same amount of time he has now spent in prison for his non-violent crime. Appellate Judge William H. Byrnes stated that the sentence was “clearly excessive, and designed to cause needless suffering.” Finch has said that being separated from his family “feel[s] like my soul has been pierced and assaulted.” Another that exemplifies the travesty of our prisons is that of Timothy Jackson. The crime for which he received a mandatory sentence of life without parole: shoplifting a $159 jacket from a department store in New Orleans – an offense which now carries a six-month sentence- down from the two-year sentence when Jackson was arrested in 1996. He was 36 years old at the time. Like Rayvell Finch, he was sentenced as a habitual offender; his previous three ‘strikes’ were simple robbery when he was 17, and two simple car-burglary convictions. None of the crimes for which he was convicted of were violent, as noted by the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal, which called it “inappropriate” and “a prime example of an unjust result.” While that same appeals court lessened his sentence initially, the Louisiana Supreme Court reinstated the full sentence, ruling that except under rare circumstances, judges could not depart from life sentences mandated by the habitual offender law. I strongly feel that the system is completely and utterly unjust, and this is just one example. Both Finch and Jackson had made efforts to reform themselves in
Islamabad – Ph: 051-2204545
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prison; Finch had completed substance abuse and anger management treatment, as well as literary and Christian ministry programs. Jackson earned his GED while imprisoned and learned woodworking, becoming skilled to a point where his creations are sold at the Angola Prison Rodeo’s Arts and Crafts Festival. However, due to their sentences which removed the possibility of parole, their rehabilitation will never matter—they will never be released, no matter how much they have changed and improved themselves. This is but one reason why the prison population remains so high; sentencing laws are completely blind, and the judges are forced to follow them like sheep. Of the total prison population, 40 percent of those incarcerated are Black, despite Black Americans only comprising 13 percent of the country’s total population. Drug charges are a clear example of racial disparities – according to the NAACP, “African Americans and whites use drugs at similar rates, but the imprisonment rate of African Americans for drug charges is almost 6 times that of whites.” The incarceration rate for Black men is five times higher than those of white men. Nearly 70 percent of Black boys born today – 1 in 3 – will likely be imprisoned at some point in their lives. These statistics can only begin to convey the enormity of the injustice that is being compounded day after day. The time is overdue to reform the prison system that stigmatizes America and defies its moral standing and values. Since we cannot count on the Trump administration to lift a finger, the burden will fall on the next president, who will hopefully come in the form of Joe Biden later this year. Once in office, he must make criminal justice reform one of his top priorities. He must undo the legacy he helped create with the 1994 crime bill, which helped fuel the increase in the prison population. One step would be to commit to freeing all prisoners who are incarcerated for petty crimes, especially for possession of marijuana and other small quantities of drugs that pose no danger to public safety. This will not only save a substantial amount of money on the costs of incarceration and courts, but it will help stem the spread of COvID-19 among the prison population. This is the reality of mass incarceration and one of this country’s greatest shames — for if we really value freedom and respect human rights, we must correct this palpable and outrageous injustice. Dr Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Centre for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. alon@alonben-meir.com
Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
COMMENT 07 Editor’s mail Send your letters to: Letters to Editor, Pakistan Today, 4-Shaarey Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan. E-mail: letters@pakistantoday.com.pk Letters should be addressed to Pakistan Today exclusively
Clarification
Progressing strategic rivalry and the Indo-Pacific The brawl at Ladakh exposed India’s weaknesses MuhAMMAd AzAM KhAn
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N December 2012 shortly after taking over, PM of Japan, Shinzo Abe called for the formation of a “Democratic Security Diamond” (DSD). Ostensibly an alliance of four of Asia’s prominent maritime democracies, Australia, India, the US and Japan, were asked to safeguard what Abe called, ‘the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean region to the Western Pacific’. In November 2017, on the sidelines of ASEAN summit in Manila, these four countries held a significant meeting. No joint statement was released, but each issued a separate declaration. The pronouncements stressed on the need for a series of objectives inter-alia, ‘a free and open Indo-Pacific (FOIP); a rules-based order; freedom of navigation and over flight; and respect for international law and maritime security’. What was until then DSD, formally became “Quad” or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. DSD is not a formal military alliance per se yet it signals a collective deterrence resolve. In January this year, nearly 700 delegates from over hundred countries assembled in New Delhi to begin talks in what is India’s newest grandstand on strategic issues, Raisina dialogue. In the forum, essentially a China bashing grand event organized by India, the Indian navy’s top officer expressed his country’s unease in no uncertain terms. ‘India is concerned about unusual activity of Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean and initiatives like BRI and CPEC that impinged on Indian sovereignty’, charged the Indian navy chief. He conveniently forgot the long presence of a huge US armada with headquarters at Bahrain. More recently, the Indian Prime Minister and his Australian counterpart held a virtual summit. The two leaders signed a military pact to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the IndoPacific region. The “arrangement concerning Mutual Logistics Support,” calling for reciprocal access to each nation’s respective military bases, was sealed during the remote summit. On the night of this June 15/16, at nearly 14,000 feet high on the ridges of Galwan valley in Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), Chinese and Indian troops went into a mortal combat. It was a brutal hand to hand fight, one of the bloodiest and most uncharacteristic since limited war between the two in 1962. Iron rods studded with nails and fist fights were used. The faceoff left 76 injured and 20 dead on the Indian side and an unknown number wounded on the Chinese side. The Indian dead included the commanding officer of 16 Bihar Regiment, the Indian army unit involved in the clash. These are scattered events and incidents but point to two progressing strategic rivalries, USChina and China-India. Was the faceoff at Ladakh a calculated move by India; did Modi government overestimate its strength? Is the incident in any way linked to QUAD; the amassing of maritime military forces in South China Sea or other developments in the Indo-Pacific? Reassured by US and encouraged by its new found love of Arab world which conferred civil awards despite India’s barbaric suppression of Muslim voice in Kashmir, Modi went on to issue official maps showing liberated areas of Azad Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and Aksai Chin as part of India. It was a strategic miscalculation founded on erroneous confidence and backing
of external patrons. Beijing’s little or no reaction when blamed by New Delhi and Washington for the spread of Covid-19 pandemic provided further stimulus to Modi. But India’s claim over Aksai Chin was never missed by Beijing. Modi perhaps took wrong lessons on Chinese history. Aksai Chin holds strategic significance for Beijing. It links Xinjiang with Tibet. And given the strain of QUAD exacerbated by fiery pronouncements against CPEC, for Beijing it became a “pincer movement”, a tipping point to react physically. The Ladakh showdown was a “strategic signaling” of sort by Beijing. ‘China seeks to retain escalation dominance at all three levels, tactical (ground), operational (theatre) and at the politico-strategic level’. And for such an ill-advised action, Modi earned possibility of a two front war which his military is currently illprepared to fight. Kashmir has become a “trilateral issue” with China now more determined than ever to push for previous UNSCRs. Internally, India suffered a loss of political face with PM Modi’s arrogance and jingoism firmly squashed. The term Indo-Pacific appears in all major strategy documents and maritime doctrines of the US, India, Australia and Japan. The only exceptions are China and Pakistan. The former considers the construct (Indian and Pacific, a conjoined maritime expanse) as an attempt by the West led by the US to contain economic rise of China and check its entry into Indian Ocean. In pure military terms, the United States defines the IndoPacific construct as area extending from the west coast of the United States to the west coast of India. It deems this area as central to the employment of US military capabilities. The current US military forces allotted to the region illustrate that ‘the Indo-Pacific is the focus of the US military’s main effort’. For India however, the area goes beyond its western seaboard, well into Persian Gulf and East coast of Africa. Although the QUAD has thusfar avoided openly designating China as the principal threat but it could now happen sooner than later. Is this roiling strategic rivalry leading to a new cold war (cold war 2.0)? While there is nothing in the ancient history to suggest anything new in the ongoing struggle for dominance, there are few distinct differences when compared to the last era of cold war. China is currently the largest trading partner of the US with more than $ 660 billion worth of goods flowing both ways. ‘India and China trade as of 2019 stood at $ 85 billion’. Japan does not have raw material and is dependent on import shipments, largely through Indian Ocean. Australia’s economy is intrinsically linked to exports of raw
material to China and India. The country earns roughly $ 6 billion annually from Chinese students and tourists alone. The global air travel has surged dramatically over the past decade and until the beginning of this year when Covid-19 struck. Globalization is providing worldwide connectivity as never before and the human mass of 7.7 billion people on planet earth is expected to inflate to 9.7 billion in another 30 years. Herein lies the difference. In the previous cold war, the countries were firmly locked in two blocs. It was communism versus capitalism. These blocs constituted ideological split. This is no longer the case. The US policy of “containment” has no meaning today. Modern polarization is primarily driven by economic rather than “ideological divergence”. Climate change, shifting demographics, reduced agrarian lands, vNSA, conflicts, human migration, and the necessity of trade flow, especially in maritime commons, renders the coming cold war far more complex if not anarchic. A study in history reveals that nations led by competent, imaginative and selfless leadership usually come out well in times of crisis. A comparison of Xi Jinping and President Trump’s handling of Covid-19 pandemic is instructive. The death toll in US has reached the highest level in the world while China was able to effectively contract the spread of pandemic. The liberal democracies have thrown up inept, incompetent and brash leaders like Trump, Modi, Boris Johnson et.al. As a result, a complete erosion of decency in politics and human values can be seen the world over. Human morality is also at its all-time low. There has also been virtual demise of rationale thinking with social media wearing the capstone. Since taking office, Donald Trump has made 20,000 false or misleading claims, according to Washington Post, which identified a “tsunami of untruths” emanating from the Oval Office. In contrast, a closed and so-called authoritarian yet competitive and merit based system has produced likes of Xi Jinping giving the world BRI and AIIB. The strategic rivalry in a post-Covid world may not be too different than before. But new rules of the game and who occupies the White House following the upcoming November US Presidential Elections may well define its future contours.
In the previous cold war, the countries were firmly locked in two blocs. It was communism versus capitalism. These blocs constituted ideological split. This is no longer the case. The US policy of “containment” has no meaning today. Modern polarization is primarily driven by economic rather than “ideological divergence”.
Muhammad Azam Khan is an independent Researcher with over four decades of experience in maritime security and strategy, maritime doctrinal as well as naval and geo-political issues centering on Indian and Pacific Oceans. He can be reached at: mazamkhan54@gmail.com
Reference your story “vRG loses patience with red-tape to release ‘operational readiness” appearing on 15 August 2020 in your esteemed newspaper, I would like to please correct the wrong perception somehow created by the headline that we instigated this news item. I categorically state that we did NOT have anything to do with it. Even though no fault of ours, nevertheless we must correct the wrong perception and apologise if it has inadvertently offended anyone in or outside PTA. I would also like to clarify that our Ad meant to create awareness in the general public about AMA Scheme’s benefits and modus operandi thereof on Independence Day on 14 Aug 2020 was technically wrong. We had (and have) NO intention to “launch” or indulge in “commercial operations” till we have obtained the requisite “commencement certificate” from PTA. The Ad should not have used the words “commercial operations” but instead the phrase “operational readiness subject to commencement certificate issued by PTA”. As a Regulator PTA is the designated Authority to issue the “commencement certificate” and we do NOT contest this. We have unambiguously so clarified this in detail in our reply to PTA’s Press Release of 14 Aug 2020. Our committed young Pakistani colleagues have worked very hard for several years to create and develop the major components of our Pakistani technology AMAANI platform (already operationally and commercially in use in the US for multiple industries) to benefit mostly the vast majority of underprivileged Pakistanis without bank accounts. We fully intend being patient and wait some more. Ikram SEhgal ChaIrman PathfIndEr grouP and Vrg
Thar coal project THAR coal- A beacon of hope, and ray of light for poor inhabitants of the deserted region is going to leave some adverse, and inexhaustible environmental impacts on the region. More than 50 percent of the area,s population, is going to bear the environmental effect of the coal project, said Mohammad Ali Shah chairman Fisher Folk Forum a few days ago in a press conference. Constant excavation of underground water will cause acute water shortage in the area and coming generations may suffer owing to this blight that is very much on the cards;he warned. Another study revealed that the Thar coal plant is going to cause around 30 thousand deaths in the area due to pollution. The cluster of coal fired power will directly expose around 100,000 people to intoxicant, poisonous and acidic gases. Moreover it would also be harmful for peacocks which are the beauty of the acrid desert. Locals and few politicians are terming these reports and studies a Foreign intrigue which tends to curtail the country from progressing. The federal and provincial government should look into this matter earnestly. The government can take assistance of WHO and environmental specialist to contrive this hanging concern. kamran khamISo khowaja Sujawal
Lessons from a book THERE is a book namely ‘You can Win’ by the Indian author and activist Shiv Khera. The book is based on the positive-thinking attitude to become the winner and it is truly amaze which is motivating the people, in any purpose of life.once who will start this book ,can never get boredom to read the book till end.since we find some interested things which are based on our daily life. The author is continuously putting the readers at the start point of the success, through which stating that “winner don’t do different thing.they do things differently. We see many people saying that they will do things in upcoming days.why not today?and why not now?and when tomorrow comes,they say again the next-day they will do it. Similarly minutes and hours convert into days and then months and years and life get over,whatever said so never got into practice life. Shiv khera said that the best and proper time for doing something great brought into action which thought to be done in the time one think of it,so never miss the opportunities of present by leaving them on behalf of next day that which you never know what is going to happen.every today is a new tomorrow so ,the best time for doing something is present time. Furthermore, as we listen that “ sharing is caring’.one of the biggest example of shev khera said.that felt great to my heart,which I like to mention. “Once there was a man washing a car.his neighbor came and said .” wow” what a car.”he replied.”my brother has gifted to me the car.the neighbor said,’I wish I were in place of you,so I would get this car.’the man replied “you should wish that you would have a brother like mine.’his wife was listening to the two and said ,’I wish I were the brother who gifted you the car. This example is praiseworthy for givers.in this example the man’s wife was far a way better than others thoughts of man and neighbor. Therefore,we can say that sharing is caring that which as the more you share with others, the more you get from others back.similarly, the less you share,the lesser you get back. Shiv khera convenying the message of positivity of thinking. Furthermore ,another point which is important for people in this book which is “ focus system”,whatever you focus the most,you get that soonest. Whenever we focus the positive things and we get the positive result. Similarly if we focus on the negative things and we get the negative result.therefore, positive thinking brings the beneficial impact of your life. Whenever you want some better result and successful life so shift your focus frome negatively to positivity. a azad karaChI
Protecting our kids AT this stage when the child abuse cases, be it in terms of sexual assault, pornography or child trafficking are taking alarming proportions and adversely affecting the individuals, families as well as the whole society, it was a beautiful piece of jurisdiction by the Senate. Dearth of laws and bodies to check such incidents had led the numbers to suffer in the past but today the imposition of this law would assist in curbing the rate of such cases which are leading to serious threats including guilt, self blames, nightmares, insomnia, suicidal ideation, self injury, depression, aggressive behavior etc among the children. Highly hoping to see a positive change. uSman mIr karaChI
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
08 WORLD VIEW
What the Palestinians think of the israel-Uae ‘deal’
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Consortium news
HE State of Palestine’s Department of Negotiation Affairs and the Palestine Liberation Organization issued this statement on Sunday: On the Joint Statement of the United States, Israel, and the United Arab of Emirates announcing the UAE- Israel agreement to normalize relations. 1. Can this deal be described as “historic diplomatic breakthrough (that) will advance peace in the Middle East region”? The tripartite announcement suggests that Israel ended its occupation of Palestine, which is not the case. Until the date of this announcement, the UAE’s historical position on Palestine remained in line with the position of the Arab League and its member states. According to the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 (API), the advancement of peace in the Middle East and hence the normalization with Israel can only happen once Israel affirms: (I) “Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967,” including the occupied Syrian Golan and the remaining occupied Lebanese territories. (II) “Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.” (III) “The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” Thus, with this deal, the UAE contravenes the API and all its terms of reference. The question of Palestine remains unresolved. Israel’s occupation, colonization, and oppression of the Palestinian people continue to this day, with grave violations of international law and their human rights being perpetrated every single day. For the Palestinians, the day of this announcement, 13 August 2020, will also be remembered as the day when Israeli warplanes launched airstrikes targeting several locations in the Gaza Strip, including an UNRWA elementary school in Al- Shati Refugee Camp. The school was closed upon finding the missile and later dismantling it before exploding, causing damage to several classrooms. It was also the same day that the Israeli Prime Minister declared that he remains intent on pursuing his illegal annexation plans. 2. What are the implications of the UAE’s acceptance of normalizing relations with Israel? This is the first time for an Arab country, which is not in a direct state of war with Israel, to agree on having full normal relations with Israel. With this move, the UAE has decided to weaken the Arab, Islamic, Palestinian, and international position calling for an end to Israel’s occupation and the achievement of Palestinian self-determination and independence, which are essential pillars of a just solution. This deal is also opening the door to a normalization of relations between Israel and other Arab countries. Rewarding Israel, the occupying power, with normalization before resolving the question of Palestine in all its aspects within a just and comprehensive solution, or even any credible effort to that end, is unacceptable, irresponsible, and dangerous. This deal not only encourages Israel to continue rejecting the principle of “land for peace” and the two-state solution based on the pre-1967 borders, but also serves the “Greater Israel” colonial project between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
THE STATE OF PALESTINE NEGOTIATION AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT HAS LAID OUT PALESTINE’S POSITION REGARDING THE DEAL BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES AND HOW IT AFFECTS PALESTINIANS Obviously, following the release of the joint statement, PM Netanyahu deliberately labeled this deal as “peace for peace.’’ He also said: “Who would have ever dreamed there would be a peace agreement with an Arab country without our returning to the 1967 borders,” In this way, Israel and the Trump Administration seek to build a regional alliance between some Arab countries, especially the Gulf States, and Israel, that effectively undermines and sidelines Palestinian national rights, and not only to confront dangers such as the threat of terrorism or the illusory Iranian threat. As such, this agreement connotes UAE complicity with Israel’s occupation and defacto annexation of Palestine, the colonial settlement enterprise, and the reality of apartheid it has created. Any “deal” that ignores this reality and permits the continuation, rather than the end, of the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, will further consolidate Israel’s colonial projects and oppressive policies against the Palestinian people. This will continue to undermine the security of the entire region and the world and undermine efforts to achieve genuine peace and stability in the Middle East. The UAE’s consent to “expand diplomatic, trade, and security cooperation” with Israel is a reward and will be exploited by the occupying power as carte blanche to continue committing grave violations of human rights, international law, and international humanitarian law in occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem. Additionally, it clearly represents an electoral favor for PM Netanyahu and President Trump, throwing them a lifeline amidst the troubles surrounding them. 3. Isn’t the UAE free to do what is in its best interest – that this deal can create a better region as it believes? As an Arab country, the UAE is committed to the foundations of Arab solidarity, among the most prominent of which is the Arab consensus and the respect of the Arab summits’ decisions. Therefore, the UAE is not entirely free to violate these decisions unless it announces its disavowal or exit from the Arab system. The national interest of every Arab country, including the UAE, is defined in line with its Arab and international obligations. Consequently, this interest doesn’t connotate what is contrary to the API and the decisions of the Arab summits, the most recent of which are the Dhahran and Tunis Summits. The UAE, like any other country, is free to pursue its interests, provided that it is not at the expense of Palestine. The UAE has no right to negotiate in the name of the people of Palestine or to compromise their interests. 4. Is this deal in line with the Constitution of the UAE, the Arab and Islamic summits, and the Arab Peace Initiative? The deal is inconsistent with the Constitution of the UAE, which underlines that it is part of the nation of the Arab world and therefore “bound by the ties of religion, language, history and common destiny.” It also specifies that the foreign policy of the UAE should be guided towards “support for Arab and Islamic causes
(…) on the basis of the principles of the charter of the United Nations and ideal international standards.” The deal violates the Arab League Charter of 1945, which stated that: “The League has as its purpose the strengthening of the relations between the member-states, the coordination of their policies in order to achieve co-operation between them and to safeguard their independence and sovereignty; and a general concern with the affairs and interests of the Arab countries.” Since then, the question of Palestine has been actively present on the agenda of most Arab and Islamic summits and its centrality repeatedly emphasized. More so, they stressed standing up to the dangers of Zionism as a national responsibility on the people of all Arab and Islamic countries towards the restoration of Arab rights in Palestine. With regards to the API, the Arab States underlined and conditioned normalizing relations with Israel in the context of comprehensive peace. It called for “full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, reaffirmed by the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the landfor-peace principle, and Israel’s acceptance of independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital,…“ The deal contradicts the resolutions of three Arab summits, Amman in 1980, Baghdad in 1990, and Cairo in 2000, which called for cutting all relations with any country that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or transfers its embassy to the City. It also disregards the successive Arab summits, including those held in Dhahran in 2018 and Tunisia in 2019, and the resolutions of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the most recent of which was the extraordinary meeting on 10 June 2020 explicitly addressing Israel’s annexation threat. In addition to other accountability measures, the OIC called for imposing economic and political sanctions on Israel, boycotting its colonial enterprise, and banning its settlements products. 5. What are the implications of calling this tripartite deal the “Abraham Accord”? Such a designation indicates the extent to which the Trump Administration is sunk in the religious/ ideological mentality that formed the foundation of the Trump Plan. It emphasizes the religious dimension at the expense of the political solution based on international law and human rights, thereby presenting an imbalanced, unjust, and unsustainable solution to end the conflict. By presenting its narrative within a religious framework, without tackling the essence of the problem, the Trump Administration insists on assigning a religious character to the conflict and further stoking tensions among the three monotheistic religions. This designation also reflects the Trump Administration’s leading role in this disgraceful deal, with the UAE complying with the U.S. will. 6. What does the deal say about Jerusalem? While Emirati officials have presented
the deal as a “victory” for the Palestinian cause and regional peace, in reality, this is contradicted by the fact that it has been achieved under the framework of the U.S.Israel initiative aimed at perpetuating the Israeli occupation and colonization of occupied Jerusalem, the heart of Palestine and hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims worldwide. The deal is tantamount to de-facto recognition of Israel’s illegal annexation of Jerusalem as it avoids any references to international law or relevant UN resolutions or the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in their City. Instead, it uses the U.S. Annexation Plan (Trump Plan) as a reference, which implies accepting Israel’s unlawful annexation of occupied East Jerusalem and its control over the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and other Muslim and Christian holy sites in the City. A position that blatantly contradicts the rules of international law and numerous UN resolutions. Furthermore, the statement adds a reference to Al- Aqsa Mosque Compound being opened to “peaceful worshippers” from “all faiths,” which threatens to undermine the legal and historical status quo of Jerusalem and its holy sites. 7. Will this deal even halt Israel’s illegal annexation plans? Normalization of relations between Israel and Arab countries will enable Israel to de jure annex the Palestinian lands under its occupation at any later time in implementation of Netanyahu’s pledge. In this regard, it cannot be ignored that, following the announcement of the deal, PM Netanyahu blatantly stated that: “I also said I’d bring sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. There is no change in my plan to do so, in full coordination with the United States. I am committed to it. Nothing has changed.” Unmistakably, the claim of ‘suspending annexation’ is simply a pretext to justify the UAE’s deviation from the Arab and Islamic consensus and misleads the Arab and international communities into seeing such a deal as serving the interests of the people of Palestine. The reality is that such a deal can only facilitate the continued and gradual implementation of Israel’s annexation plans while deflecting and undermining a response from the international community. Israel’s de-facto annexation of Palestinian lands is ongoing since the beginning of Israel’s occupation and forceful seizure of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza strip, in 1967, and it continues at this time unabated. These are facts that cannot be ignored, and the international community must not relent in its pressure on Israel to cease these illegal and destructive actions. 8. What are the position and asks of the State of Palestine? All political and civil components of the Palestinian people, in the homeland, exile, and the diaspora, expressed their unanimous rejection and condemnation of the tripartite declaration, which was described as a betrayal of the just cause of Palestine and of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound. Through an official statement, the Palestinian leadership rejected this deal
and described it as a “blow to the Arab Peace Initiative and the decisions of the Arab and Islamic summits, as well as an aggression against the Palestinian people.” The leadership called on the UAE to withdraw from this “disgraceful” declaration immediately. It emphasized that the Palestine Liberation Organization shall remain the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and that there should be no correlation between the illegal Israeli annexation plans and any step of normalization with Israel by the UAE or any other Arab State: “Neither the Emirates nor any other party has the right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian leadership shall allow nobody to interfere in the Palestinian affairs or decide on their behalf regarding their legitimate rights in their homeland.” The State of Palestine summoned its ambassador to the UAE and demanded the UAE to retract its position. The leadership called on other Arab countries might take a similar step and called upon the Arab League to respect the will of its people; to put an end to such a unilateral and irresponsible behavior and to abide by its charter based on the foundations of Arab solidarity and the joint and unified Arab position. The leadership called for immediate emergency sessions of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to address this matter. It reiterated the importance of adhering to international law and resolutions; that the achievement of peace is only possible through a full end of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the achievement by the Palestinian people of their inalienable rights, including to selfdetermination and independence. Among many other Israeli violations committed on the day, and during various raids on Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank, the Israeli occupation forces carried out arrests of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the governorates of Bethlehem, Hebron, Jenin, and Salfit. Also, lands belonging to the Palestinian town of Kafr Al-Lubad in Tulkarem Governorate were bulldozed for the construction of a 10-kilometer long settler road reaching the settlement of “Avni Hefetz” established on the town’s lands. Around 52% of the total area of the occupied West Bank is subject to Israeli control and restrictive measures, including among several designations: Palestinian lands declared as Israel’s state land, closed military zones, nature reserves, settlements areas, and Palestinian areas isolated by Israel’s annexation wall. With regards to new settlement announcements, and most recently, two Israeli plans were revealed for the construction of nearly 3,500 settlement units in the area planned for the E1 colonial project located on the eastern gateway of Jerusalem. According to the Israeli organization Peace Now, the objection period for these plans would end on 18 August 2020. The Settlement and Wall Resistance Commission reported that during the first half of 2020: 60 Israeli settlement plans were announced for the construction of more than 10,500 Israeli settlement units on lands belonging to the State of Palestine. According to UNOCHA, this year and until the end of July 2020, Israel carried out nearly 200 demolition operations, which led to the full demolition and confiscation of 388 Palestinian homes and structures, displacing and otherwise affecting over 2,300 Palestinians.
What to learn from A-level chaos? GCSE results should now be thrown in the bin THE INTRODUCTION OF AN ALGORITHM IGNORED THE FACT THAT LOSERS SHOUT LOUDER THAN WINNERS
Guardian Simon JenkinS
Poor Gavin Williamson. This year should have been his dream. More British students than ever will go on to university. More than ever will be from disadvantaged backgrounds. And their unexamined A-levels will stand to their credit, with 2% more getting A
and A* grades. Pupils everywhere would be pictured “jumping for joy” in the time-honoured newspaper fashion. But these are facts and facts make poor headlines. Instead all the chickens of Whitehall’s quantification mania have come home to roost. Williamson made the same mistake as did his health colleague Matt Hancock. He left mathematicians in charge of the henhouse. Their algorithm ignored sod’s law of democracy, that losers shout louder than winners. It made a third of all A-level examinees losers – and mob rule predictably broke out. Other than for league table nerds, the sole usefulness of A-levels is to give an easy ride to university admissions officers. They
need not apply any human yardstick or interview, just put applicants in a queue by getting them to tick boxes. One result has been to entrench the hold of elite universities on the “ablest” pupils. A-levels are full of unfairness. Figures last year from the Higher Education Policy Institute show that while in “objective” subjects like maths, just 4% of marks are different if the papers are re-marked, for more subjective history and English almost half the grades vary. As a result, one in four A-level grades is said to be “wrong”. Most people seem to accept this as the way of the world. It is now abundantly clear why, in the absence of examinations, the Ofqual regulator
this year tried to adjust the preliminary “results” of individual teacher predictions. It had nothing to do with accuracy and everything to do with continuity and tidiness. It was inevitable that this would go haywire. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland got the point and reverted to teacher assessment alone. Williamson in his Whitehall bunker failed to see the same necessity. He must surely do so now, and leave universities to cope with the resulting mess. On Thursday the government has a chance to make some amends. It is scheduled to publish its “fake” GCSE results for 16-year-olds. It should bin them as pointless. If A-levels are a confidence trick, GCSEs merely relieve schools of their duty of deciding what pupils might beneficially learn. They are about regulatory quantification, incentives, charts and graphs, while reducing pupils to tension, tears and rote-learning. They have become a tribal rite of passage,
like confirmation in church. Education’s high priests have been left chanting the virtue of exams as a regime of discipline, resilience, hard work, mind- and memory-training. Justifications for examinations are like the past reasons for corporal punishment, “good enough for me so it’s good enough for them”. Treating pupils as a cross between sheepdogs and monastery novices has zero relevance to real life. As it is, this year could have been an opportunity to test some alternative to Dickens’ Gradgrind system of measuring “little vessels” with “gallons of facts”. We could have tried a different more humanistic system, liberating schools from the dictatorship of the exam and leaving universities to organise their own admissions. Instead we are told that an entire age cohort has “had its life wrecked”. I doubt it, but there is one lesson it has learned for sure, never trust an algorithm.
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
BUSINESS 09
AftEr mOnthS Of StAgnAtIOn, tExtIlE ExPOrtS rISE 14.4PC YOY In JulY
CORPORATE CORNER
ISLAMABAD GHULAM ABBAS
KARACHI: Being a part of the federal government’s efforts to offset the impacts of climate change by rehabilitating forests, conserving soil, and improving water management, BankIslami observed plantation drive under the campaign “Plantation for the Nation”.
KARACHI: Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh inaugurated the Baabe-Muhammad at Naya Nazimabad Jamia Masjid. Upon completion, the mosque which is built on 175,000 square feet will welcome 12,000 worshippers at a time.
As lockdowns are being gradually eased around the world months after the outbreak of Covid-19 Pandemic, Pakistan’s exports, especially in the textile sector, have also started picking up. The Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns had badly dented the demand for the country's exports during the last four months. As per the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics on Monday, the country’s textile and clothing exports increased by 14.4pc to $1.272 billion in July 2020, as compared to exports worth $1.112 billion in the corresponding month of last year. Commerce ministry officials say that the ease in lockdown in the North American and European countries, which are the top export destinations for Pakistani textile goods,
PakiStan’S textile and clotHing exPortS riSe to $1.272 billion in July 2020, aS comPared to exPortS wortH $1.112bn in July 2019 would ultimately help revive the country’s exports. Pakistan has also seen a pick up in international orders since June, as exports via land routes were also allowed to Iran and Afghanistan. Earlier in Feb 2020, the textile and clothing exports had jumped nearly 17pc on a year-on-year basis. This growth was reported after a long time as the past few years had been marred by single-digit increases. As per the PBS data, the export of readymade garments enhanced by 18.04pc YoY in value but drifted lower by 32.82pc in quantity during July 2020.
SC orders return of state land granted for petrol pumps ISLAMABAD TLTP
KARACHI: National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), in collaboration with the Sindh government, has established the new building of NICVD Hyderabad to provide free of cost cardiology services to the population of Sindh at their doorsteps.
KARACHI: The Bank of Punjab (BoP) and the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) have announced the launch of a scholarship programme to provide financial assistance to five fresh undergraduate students from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, interior Sindh, Balochistan and southern Punjab regions under “The BoP-IBA National Talent Hunt Programme”.
KARACHI: Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh inaugurated the Baabe-Muhammad at Naya Nazimabad Jamia Masjid. Upon completion, the mosque which is built on 175,000 square feet will welcome 12,000 worshippers at a time.
Likewise, the export of knitwear surged 20.42pc in value and 14.49pc in quantity, while that of bed wear grew 25.3pc in value and 6.36pc in quantity. Towel exports increased by 21.40pc in value and 26.98pc in quantity, whereas cotton cloth exports inched up 1.15pc in value but dipped 22.31pc in quantity. Among primary commodities, cotton yarn exports dipped by 37.88pc; yarn other than cotton by 47.53pc and raw cotton by 100pc. However, the export of made-up articles — excluding towels — surged by 26.04pc, while tents, canvas and tarpaulin increased by a massive 155.86pc during the month
The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday ordered the return of state land given on lease for petrol pumps in Faisalabad by the National Highway Authority (NHA). A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed, heard the case. According to details, a petrol pump has been established on a green belt while another in an amusement park premises in Faisalabad. A counsel informed the court that the NHA had granted state land on lease to the filling stations. "The NHA is not above the law and it cannot grant the state land for business," Justice Qazi Ameen, a member of the bench said. "Let some
rights of the people of this country remain intact." CJP Gulzar noted that the NHA had allowed petrol pumps on the green belt with Rs30,000 annual rent. "How was this land for the green belt allotted for a petrol pump?" the top judge questioned, ordering the removal of all pumps established on green belts. "The court cannot give permission for the state land to be granted at such a low price," Justice Ijazul Ahsan remarked. The SC sought a report from the Punjab government over the matter within four weeks. In the previous hearing of the case, the SC had sought lease details of the petrol pumps established on state land around the Grand Trunk (GT) Road. The court had also sought details of land allotted to petrol pumps, hotels and restaurants and details of licences issued by the NHA.
Hafeez Shaikh vows all-out measures for smooth supply of wheat, flour ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT
Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh has said that the government will take all-out measures to ensure the availability of sufficient wheat and flour to the masses throughout the year. He made this statement while chairing a meeting at the Finance Division to review the situation, availability and future demand of wheat and flour in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce, Textile and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood, KP Finance Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra, Chief Secretary Dr Kazim Niaz, Federal Finance Secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch, and National Food Security & Research Secretary Omar Hamid Khan were also present on the occasion. The meeting reviewed the current wheat situation in the province in detail, particularly existing stocks in the public sector and requirement for the province
until the next harvest in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It decided to take appropriate measures to ensure sufficient supply and availability of wheat and flour in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the coming months. KP Chief Secretary Dr Kazim Niaz informed the meeting that the provincial government had about 0.6 million tonnes of wheat in its stocks while it had recently procured 100,000 tonnes of wheat from PASSCO and another 100,000 from it was in the process of being carried off to the province. He said the provincial authorities planned to procure another 300,000 tonnes of wheat from the PASSCO, for which they were already in touch with the body. Similarly, they had plans to import 300,000 tonnes of wheat. The chief secretary said the provincial government aimed to have at least 1.5 million tonnes of wheat in its stocks, and the same quantity was likely to be supplied by the private parties to the local market to meet the wheat requirement of an estimated 3 million tonnes for the province until the start of the next harvest.
MARKET DAILY
Bears pull KSE-100 down 168 points KARACHI STAFF REPORT
Bears ruled the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on the first trading session of the week, with the benchmark index closing in the red zone amid volatile activity. The performance of global equity markets also remained mixed, whereas crude oil prices lowered from the previous close; WTI crude price fell 0.14pc to $41.95 while Brent crude oil price dropped 0.29pc to $44.67. "The stock market witnessed negativity on Monday, mainly due to the adverse impact of tariff rationalization for IPPs, as well as selling pressure on fertiliser and cement sectors due to the repayment of GIDC as decided by the Supreme
Court on the previous trading day," said a report issued by AHL Ltd. "Exploration & Production and oil & gas companies performed well, partly due to investors switching from power and fertiliser sectors and partly because of the expectation of resolution of issues pertaining to circular debt." The benchmark KSE-100 Index saw volatility throughout the day, registering its intraday high at 40,405.41 (+114.67 points) and intraday low at 39,939.69 (351.05 points). It closed lower by 168.24 points at 40,122.50. Among other indices, the KMI-30 Index gained 70.86 points to end at 64,554.19, while the KSE All Share Index added 64.94 points, settling at 28,199.20. The overall market volumes declined
from 556.3 million shares in the previous session to 522.7 million shares (-6pc). Average traded value, on the contrary, increased by 16pc, from $115.1 million to $133.7 million. Unity Foods Ltd (UNITY +2.59pc), Hascol Petroleum Ltd (HASCOL +0.61pc) and TRG Pakistan Ltd (TRG +1.74pc) led the volume chart, exchanging 37.37 million, 35.31 million and 26.44 million shares, respectively. Sectors that dragged the index to the red included fertiliser (-169.73 points), power generation & distribution (-127.89 points) and banking (-49.50 points). Among the companies, Hub Power Company Ltd (HUBC -122.76 points), Engro Corporation Ltd (ENGRO -118.15 points) and Habib Bank Ltd (HBL -62.70 points) dented the index the most.
CMYK
Shedding 2.99pc from its cumulative market capitalization, the fertiliser sector turned out to be the session's top gainer, with Engro Fertilizer Ltd (EFERT 5.45pc), Engro Corp Ltd (ENGRO 5.34pc) and Fauji Fertilizer Bin Qasim Ltd (FFBL -5.86pc) closing in the red. Meanwhile, Pak Elektron Limited (PAEL +2.14pc) announced its financial performance for the second quarter of FY20. Despite a fall of 3.67pc in sales, the company's gross profit margin improved from 10.09pc last year to 21.9pc, as cost of sales fell by 16pc. The company's earnings per share improved from Rs0.17 in 2QFY19 to Rs0.19. Also, in a notification to the exchange, Hub Power Company Ltd (HUBC 6.18pc) informed that the company and the Committee for Negotiations with Independent Power Producers (constituted by the federal government) have executed a memorandum of understanding.
under review. As per the data, the import of textile machinery dropped by 33.91pc during the first month of FY21, indicating no sign of expansion or modernization of the textile industry. It may be noted that Pakistan’s textile and clothing exports dropped 6pc to $12.526 billion in the fiscal year 201920, compared to $13.327 billion in the corresponding period last year. In a bid to revive exports amid pandemic, the government had lifted the ban on exports of seven products classified as personal protective equipment (PPE) so that manufacturers could honour international orders. “Exporters are receiving inquiries about PPEs from foreign buyers as the government had allowed exports of disposable gowns, disposable gloves, face shields, biohazard bags, goggles, shoe covers and hand sanitisers,” a commerce ministry official informed.
IESCO refutes report claiming Power Division’s involvement in company issues BUSINESS DESK Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) on Monday refuted a report which claimed that the Power Division has been "trying to transfer its favoured candidates to important positions at IESCO". In a clarification issued on Monday, the power company stated, “IESCO Chief Executive Officer (CEO) did not give any statement regarding involvement of Ministry of Energy Power Division in IESCO’s issues and unnecessary pressure regarding transfer and posting of corrupt officials [in IESCO]. “The purpose of the written letter was only to get the approval of the posting of Ashan Zaman as Xen Civil." Earlier on August 15, this scribe had reported that IESCO CEO Shahid Iqbal Chaudhry had alleged that the Power Division has been trying to transfer its favoured candidates to important positions at IESCO despite a ban on postings. The report added that the Power Division had directed the IESCO CEO to transfer an official who is allegedly involved in corruption. It further said that the IESCO CEO was perturbed over transfer/posting of Ahsan Zaman in IESCO due to which he had written a letter to Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) managing director asking approval of transfer/posting orders.
Accord with IPPs to reduce power generation cost: Omar Ayub BUSINESS DESK Energy Minister Omar Ayub Khan said on Monday that the federal government, through its new agreement with IPPs, was working towards reducing the cost of electricity in the country, adding that reforms pertaining to the power sector would be introduced within the next three weeks. The energy minister, while addressing a press conference, blamed the previous governments for the country’s energy crisis and said that the previous regimes had not done sufficient work to uplift the energy sector. Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on the Power Division Shahzad Qasim was also present during the press conference. Commenting on the government’s new agreement with the Independent Power Producers (IPPs), the energy minister said that the agreement will promote industries and help reduce the burden of circular debt. He said that the government will introduce reforms in the power sector and bring forward more information within three weeks. He further said that the new agreement will help provide cheaper electricity to the end consumers adding that the government wants to provide cheap electricity to the agriculture sector and small businesses which will help these sectors lower their production costs. Earlier on August 15, the federal government announced that it has signed a new agreement with the IPPs under which the cost of electricity generation would be brought down and circular debt would be reduced. “I congratulate the nation because we are fixing the damaging structure we inherited in our power sector,” Prime Minister Imran Khan had said in a series of tweets. The prime minister had also promised that he would soon introduce a package that would focus on improving the distribution system by tackling line losses and theft. Moreover, Information Minister Shibli Faraz and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Power Division Shahzad Qasim had said that the new agreement with the IPPs links the profit on local investment with the Pakistani rupee.
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
10 FOREIGN NEWS
Facebook Faces heat From IndIan lawmakers on content practIces NEW DELHI AGENCIES
Indian politicians are trading barbs over a media report that Facebook Inc’s content policies favoured Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, putting the social network at the centre of a political storm in its biggest market by users. Lawmakers of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have accused the social media giant of censoring nationalist voices, after the opposition Congress seized on a Wall Street Journal report to seek a parliamentary investigation of Facebook employees’ alleged ties with
the ruling party. Facebook was already a “Left-Congress-leaning platform”, said BJP lawmaker and former minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. “This storm in a teacup is merely an exercise to browbeat Facebook for ‘allowing’ certain opinions to even exist,” Rathore wrote in a column in the Indian Express newspaper. “There are examples of current and former Facebook executives with links to the former government and opposition parties, and some of them have been openly critical of the prime minister as well. To accuse them of being pro-BJP is
laughable.”Tejasvi Surya, another BJP lawmaker and a member of a parliamentary committee on information technology, said many people had complained to him that Facebook was “unfairly censoring many nationalist, pro-India or proHindu voices”, and that he would take up the matter with relevant authorities. On Sunday, the Congress party said on Twitter, “Millions of Indians are controlled and manipulated by BJP through Facebook” and its popular messaging service, WhatsApp. The WSJ report said Facebook’s top public-policy executive in India, Ankhi Das, had opposed applying its hate-
speech rules to a member of Modi’s party and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups “flagged internally for promoting or participating in violence”. The Journal also said Das had told staff members that punishing violations by politicians from Modi’s party “would damage the company’s business prospects in the country”. Facebook, which has more than 300 million users in India, referred on Monday to a weekend statement that said it prohibited hate speech irrespective of one’s political position but acknowledged, “There is more to do.”
UAE minister says UAE-Israel agreement not directed at Iran ABU DHABI AGENCIES
The United Arab Emirates’ agreement to normalise ties with Israel was a “sovereign decision” that was not directed at Iran, UAE minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash said on Monday. The UAE on Sunday said it had summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires in Abu Dhabi and given him a “strongly worded memo” in response to a speech by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that the foreign ministry described as “unacceptable”. Speaking on Saturday, Rouhani said the UAE had made a “huge mistake” in reaching a agreement to nor-
11 Yemen soldiers killed in clashes, missile attack
malise ties with Israel and called it a betrayal by the Gulf state. The US-sponsored deal has been seen as firming up opposition to regional power Iran, which Gulf states, Israel and the United States view as the main threat in the conflict-riven Middle East. “The UAE-Israeli peace treaty is a sovereign decision not directed at Iran. We say this and repeat it. We do not accept interference in our decisions,” Gargash said on Twitter. The secretary general of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council on Sunday condemned “threats” by Rouhani and other Iranian officials towards the UAE over the accord. Iran, Turkey lash out at UAE over agreement with
Israel: Iran and Turkey lashed out at the UAE on Friday over its decision to normalise diplomatic relations with Israel in a US-brokered deal, accusing it of betraying the Palestinian cause. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the deal a “dagger that was unjustly struck by the UAE in the backs of the Palestinian people and all Muslims”. Turkey said the peoples of the region “will never forget and will never forgive this hypocritical behaviour” by the UAE. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the UAE had no authority to negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians or “to make concessions on matters vital to Palestine”.
4 killed, 14 injured in 'extremely violent night' in Ohio
SANAA
CINCINNATI
TLTP
TLTP
Eleven Yemeni government troops, including a senior officer, were killed in a rebel missile attack and clashes to the northeast and east of the capital Sanaa, media reported on Monday. General Mohammed Ali-Roqn, commander of the army's 122 Brigade, along with eight other soldiers were killed in battle in Al-Jawf province on Sunday while trying to reclaim positions lost months ago. The rebels also suffered casualties, a military official added without elaborating. Houthi rebels took control of the capital of northern al-Jawf province earlier this year a strategic advance that means they now threaten oil-producing Marib province. Yemen's vice president, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, in a statement carried by the official Saba news agency, said al-Roqn was killed "while conducting military operations" in al-Jawf. Two government troops were killed and four others wounded in a Houthi missile attack on a military base in Marib, east of Sanaa, a government official said. Renewed clashes also broke out in al-Baida - which is under nominal government control - between loyalist forces and the Houthis, who have launched offensives against al-Qaeda fighters in the province. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - considered the armed group's most dangerous branch - has carried out operations against both the Houthis and government forces. AQAP on Saturday executed a dentist in al-Baida accused of spying for the government and guiding US drone strikes targeting the group. The government and rebels have been locked in a five-year war that has killed tens of thousands of people, triggering what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
At least four people have died among 18 people shot in a spate of shootings during an "extremely violent night" across the US city of Cincinnati, according to local media and police. The bloodshed in the Ohio city of about 300,000 began when three people were shot at about midnight on Saturday (05:00 GMT) in the Walnut Hills neighbourhood. Soon after, at about 12:30am (05:30 GMT) on Sunday, police were called to the Avondale area and found 21-year-old Antonio Blair with gunshot wounds. He was taken to University Hospital and died there, police said in a statement. Three other gunshot victims were also taken to the hospital. Officers then responded to a report about gunshots in the Over-the-Rhine neighbourhood at 2:15am (07:15 GMT) where 10 people had been shot, police said. One man, 34-year-old Robert Rogers, died at the scene and another, 30-year-old Jaquiez Grantat, died at the Uni-
versity of Cincinnati Medical Center. Local news outlets reported the shootings took place within 60 to 90 minutes of each other. Assistant Police Chief Paul Neudigate told reporters they "seem to be separate independent incidents but horrific and tragic". Police did not immediately provide details about the fourth fatal shooting but confirmed that it occurred on the city's West End, where television news reports indicated that one person was shot later on Sunday morning and was pronounced dead at the scene. No suspect information was immediately available in any of the cases. Neudigate described the series of incidents as "one extremely violent night in the city of Cincinnati". "Why? That's going to be the question," he said. Later in the day, Cincinnati's police chief called the spike in violence "unacceptable". "I am calling on all citizens of this great city to say enough is enough! We must not sit by silently and say we can't do anything to end gun violence," Eliot Isaac said in a statement. "We all have a moral obligation to stop the violence and stop the killing in our communities.”
China welcomes Putin's proposed summit on Iran BEIJING AGENCIES
China welcomed on Monday to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposed summit of world leaders to avoid “confrontation” over a U.S. threat to trigger a return of all U.N. sanctions on Iran. The United States lost a bid on Friday to extend a U.N. arms embargo on Iran. Russia and China opposed extending the weapons ban, which is due to expire in October under a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. Eleven members abstained, including France, Germany and Britain, while the United States and the Dominican Republic were the only two votes in favour.
Speaking in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the failure of the U.S. resolution “again showed that unilateralism has no popular support, and hegemonistic behaviour will not succeed”. The United States needed to end its unilateral sanctions and adopt a rational attitude, returning to the “correct path” of respecting the Iran nuclear agreement and Security Council decisions, Zhao added. “As for the Russian proposal for a teleconference summit on the Iran nuclear issue, China expresses its welcome and appreciation,” he said. “We are willing to continue to maintain close communication and coordination with all parties concerned to jointly promote a political settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue.”
netanyahu says Israel preparing for direct flights to Uae over saudi arabia JERUSALEM AGENCIES
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel is preparing for direct flights, over Saudi Arabia, to the United Arab Emirates as part of its normalisation deal with the UAE. Israel and the UAE announced on Thursday that they will normalise diplomatic relations under a U.S.-sponsored deal whose implementation could reshape Middle East politics from the Palestinian issue to the fight against Iran. The UAE would only be third Arab state in more than 70 years to establish relations with Israel. Netanyahu, briefed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport on plans for expanding flight activity curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic, gave no time frame for the opening of an air link with the Gulf Arab country. “We are currently working on enabling direct flights, over Saudi Arabia, between Tel Aviv and Dubai and Abu Dhabi,” Netanyahu told reporters, estimating flight time at “about three hours, just like to Rome”. Saudi Arabia does not recognise Israel and its air space is closed to Israeli airliners. But in what was seen in Israel as a harbinger of warmer relations with Riyadh, Air India was allowed in 2018 to begin flying over Saudi territory on its New Delhi-Tel Aviv route. At Ben-Gurion airport, Netanyahu said he saw “tremendous scope for bilateral tourism and gigantic scope for investment” with the UAE. A delegation from Israel is expected to travel to the UAE within weeks to work out the modalities of normalised relations, but any swift opening of a commercial air route could be complicated by coronavirus restrictions. On Sunday, the UAE opened telephone lines to Israel, a link inaugurated in a conversation between the two countries’ foreign ministers.
Israeli forces shoot and wound deaf palestinian at checkpoint WEST BANK TLTP
Israeli security guards on Monday shot and wounded a Palestinian who is deaf and could not hear their commands to stop at a West Bank checkpoint, police said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the 60-year-old man was walking in an area of the Qalandiya crossing north of Jerusalem where only vehicles are permitted. Rosenfeld said security guards called upon the man to stop but he continued to “approach them suspiciously”. They then shot at his legs, wounding him moderately. Only afterwards did the guards discover that the suspect did not respond because he “cannot hear or communicate”, Rosenfeld said.
1 syrian soldier killed, 2 wounded in Us airstrike DAMASCUS: A US airstrike targeted a Syrian Army checkpoint in the country’s northeast, killing one soldier and wounding two others, according to SANA. The soldiers were targeted by a warplane after they prevented an American military patrol from passing through the area, the outlet reported. The incident occurred southeast of Qamishli, a city near the Syria-Turkey border. The wounded soldiers were transported to a nearby hospital for treatment, SANA reported. Syrian newspaper Al-Watan reported that one of the wounded soldiers was an officer. US military patrols around Qamishli have led to confrontations in the past. In February, SANA reported that one man was killed after a crowd tried to prevent a US convoy from passing through a checkpoint east of the city. TLTP
As Democrats prepare to nominate Joe Biden, widespread fears about unfair election WASHINGTON AGENCIES
With less than 80 days to go before the U.S. presidential election, it looks like Joe Biden’s race to lose. Yet, as Democrats nationwide gather online this week to nominate him as their party’s choice to challenge President Donald Trump on Nov. 3, many fear Biden may just do that - for factors almost entirely out of his control. The former vice president and his allies have every reason to feel bullish. Polls show Biden has built an expansive lead in nearly every battleground state that Trump
won narrowly in 2016, as the Republican’s approval numbers tumble amid the coronavirus pandemic. For the first time in a decade, retaking the Senate - and full control of Congress - is within sight. Yet interviews with more than a dozen Democratic officials, activists and voters reveal deep anxieties that Trump will make voting as difficult as possible during the pandemic, and should he lose the vote, he won’t accept its outcome. Biden himself has called it his biggest fear. Former President Barack Obama sounded the alarm on Friday, saying on Twitter the Trump administration is “more concerned with suppressing the
vote than suppressing a virus.” And eight of 10 Democrats are concerned about voter suppression, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in late July. Trump has railed against voting by mail for months, proclaiming without evidence that it will lead to fraud, and on Thursday all but acknowledged he was blocking Democratic demands for additional funding for the post office because of his opposition to mail-in voting. “We can’t predict what’s going to happen other than the closer we get to the election, the more desperate Trump and his campaign will become,” said Rodell Mollineau, an adviser to Unite the Country,
a political action committee that backs Biden. Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said the president wants a “free and fair” election, adding that it is Democrats who are inviting “chaos and the very real possibility of fraud” by trying to expand voting by mail. Democrats and voting rights groups say mail-in voting can help protect voters from the coronavirus, and that a failure to guarantee that option during the pandemic will disenfranchise millions of Americans, especially the poor and African-Americans who tend to vote Democratic. Some say Biden’s commanding edge in
the polls only makes them more nervous. They worry that increasing cases of Covid19 could keep voters away from polling places, particularly if Biden is perceived as coasting to an easy win. “If Biden is up by 10 points, how likely are you to risk your life to pull that lever,” Stefan Smith, who was a top digital strategist for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. At about this time in 2016, then Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had around a five-point lead in various polls and still lost the election three months later, partly due to the first decline in AfricanAmerican turnout in 20 years.
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
Rain caUSeS fReSH deLay to engLand-PakiStan Second teSt
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AIN prevented the scheduled 11:00am local time start of the fifth day's play in the second Test between England and Pakistan at the Ageas Bowl on Monday — the latest interruption to a fixture plagued by bad weather. Only 96.2 overs have been bowled so far in a match that has long appeared destined for a draw, with England 7-1 in reply to Pakistan's first innings 236. While the umpires have faced widespread criticism for their strict interpretation of the rules regarding bad light even on a ground where the floodlights have been in use, there was little they could do about an early morning downpour on Monday that saturated the outfield at Hampshire's headquarters. Pakistan struck with just the fourth ball of England's reply on Sunday when leftarm quick Shaheen Afridi had Rory Burns caught by Asad Shafiq at second slip for a duck with a fine delivery that swung and
seamed. Dom Sibley (two not out) and Zak Crawley (five not out), recalled in place of Ben Stokes after the all-rounder withdrew to be with his ill father in New Zealand, both struggled against Afridi and the accu-
Luuk de Jong fires Sevilla into 6th final after 2-1 win over Man Utd
rate Mohammad Abbas in overcast, bowler-friendly conditions, before the umpires called a halt at 12:00pm. Play was finally abandoned for the day at 3:51 pm.
Predictably, the Ageas Bowl was bathed in sunshine minutes after that decision was announced. Pakistan were indebted to Mohammad Rizwan, who top-scored with 72 and expertly shepherded the tail when it looked like they might be dismissed for under 200. He was eventually last man out after an innings that spanned four days. Rizwan batted for three and threequarter hours, facing 139 balls with seven boundaries during his second fifty in eight career Tests following the 95 he made against Australia in Brisbane in November. Abid Ali (60) and Babar Azam (47) also battled hard in difficult conditions for batting. Stuart Broad led England's attack with 4-56 in 27.2 overs, a return that took the in-form paceman's tally in four Tests this season to 26 wickets at a miserly average of 12.38. England lead the three-match series 10 after a three-wicket win in the first Test at Old Trafford earlier this month. The series ends with the third Test, also at Southampton, starting on Friday.
Rossi says riders need to 'improve behavior' after dramatic near-miss
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Manchester United crashed out of the Europa League semi-finals with a 2-1 defeat by the competition’s record five-time winners Sevilla after palpable frailties throughout the season came back to haunt them at crunch time. Poor finishing coupled with sloppy defending, which cost United points in the early stages of the Premier League, put them to the sword in a match which they dominated after Bruno Fernandes gave them a ninth-minute lead. United’s cracks were succinctly summed up by their former trophy-laden central defender Rio Ferdinand, who won six Premier League titles and the 2008 Champions League during the club’s golden era under Alex Ferguson. “You don’t take ya chances you get punished. You don’t defend well you get punished. No need for insight tonight,” Ferdinand tweeted after United were condemned to their third semi-final exit of the season, following the FA Cup and the League Cup. Ferdinand’s present day peer Harry Maguire, bought last year from Leicester City for 80 million pounds to shore up United’s leaky defence, told BT Sport: “We conceded from two crosses which is not good enough. “Losing is not acceptable. Getting to semi-finals isn’t acceptable. We have to take it to the next step.” A pair of innocuous-looking crosses from either flank led to Sevilla’s goals as United’s defenders, positioned like statues in their area, allowed the ball to travel across the face of goal to the scorers. Suso swept in the equaliser and Luuk De Jong was given all the time and space in the world to slot home the winner after Victor Lindelof switched off.
Italian motorcycling legend Valentino Rossi said riders needed to improve their behavior and show more respect after he and Yamaha teammate Maverick Vinales narrowly escaped serious injury in the Austrian Grand Prix. Rossi, a nine-time world champion, was left shaken after Franco Morbidelli's cartwheeling Yamaha, travelling at around 300 km/h (187mph), flew across the track just centimetres in front of him. Morbidelli and the Ducati of Johann Zarco had collided just seconds before the riders slipped through an early turn at Spielberg on lap eight of the race. Both men were unseated. Zarco's Ducati also bounced across the track and came desperately close to hitting Rossi as well as Vinales, who was just ahead of him. "It was very scary. All four riders, but especially me and also Maverick, were very lucky," Rossi said. The veteran argued that being aggressive was good, "because everybody tries to do the maximum". "But for me we don't have to exaggerate, because we need to remember that this sport is very dangerous." Rossi added: "You need to have respect for your rivals, especially at a track where you're always going at 300km/h." A LESSON FOR RIDERS: Rossi questioned the manoeuvring of Zarco, who, he said, went wide in braking,
slamming the door on Morbidelli, a protege of Rossi's rider academy, VR46, who had no chance to brake. "We were very lucky, but we hope this type of incident is a lesson for riders to improve their behaviour in the future," Rossi said, hinting that Zarco would be facing even more scrutiny had there been a casualty. "I spoke with Franco, he is okay, he is trying not to think, but when he thinks, he too feels scared. "What makes the difference on this occasion is that nobody got hurt, all riders are okay,
so this changes the situation. "If something bad had happened, it would have been completely different." Zarco, dubbed "almost a murderer" by Morbidelli, was quick to claim he was innocent, insisting his manoeuvre was "not done on purpose". The MotoGP drama followed a sickening crash in Sunday's earlier Moto2 race when Malaysia's Hafizh Syahrin ploughed head-on into the bike of Italian Enea Bastianini, another VR46 graduate, which was lying in the middle of the track after a fall. Rossi's Factory Yamaha team director Massimo Meregalli said both incidents were "heart-in-the-mouth moments for all spectators, but especially for the riders". "We are so thankful that all riders involved are relatively okay." Meregalli went on to praise both Rossi and Vinales for having the nerve to restart after such a horrifying near-miss. "Valentino didn't let any of it faze him, and he got down to business as usual during Race 2," he said, Andrea Dovizioso on a factory Ducati going on to take the honours for the second year running. "Normally, fifth is a decent result, but under these circumstances it's an incredible achievement that only top riders can manage." Racing had made for "a very eventful day", Meregalli continued. "But we'll take a deep breath and keep pushing. We need to have a good look at all the data, because next week we'll have a rematch here in Spielberg."
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How a broken nose changed Steve Waugh as captain SPORTS DESK Former Australia captain Steve Waugh recalled the 1999 series in Sri Lanka during which he suffered a collision with fellow teammate Jason Gillespie, leading to both men ending up in a hospital. Waugh, who had received Test captaincy from Mark Taylor in the same year, had led Australia to a 2-2 drew against the West Indies before the Sri Lanka series. Waugh recalled that while he was recuperating from the injury in a Colombo hospital, he realised that he has not truly justified the role of the captain in the short time he has led the team. “At 33 it still probably took me 6-12 months to realise my style. I was still probably leading by consensus a bit early on because I’d been mates with these guys (teammates) for a long period of time and all of a sudden I was the leader,” Waugh told Damian Barrett on a recent episode of the AFL journalist’s podcast In The Game, according to Fox Sports. “So, having to separate myself a little bit from the rest of the guys was a challenge. I finally realised that when I was in a hospital bed in Colombo with a broken nose and Jason Gillespie had a broken leg. I was sitting there in a hospital bed thinking, ‘If I never get to captain again, have I done myself justice? Had I done it my way?’ And the answer was, no I hadn’t,” Waugh said. “From that point on I said just trust my gut instinct and do it my way. And that was probably the turning point in my captaincy career,” he further added. “I wasn’t a certainty to play the next Test. I had compound fractures of my nose and … all these other broken bones, so I was thinking maybe I’m not going to play the next Test and if I don’t, somebody else will be captain and I might never get the chance to do it again. That was the moment where I sat down and thought, ‘OK, from now on I’ve got to do it my way’ — and listen to a few people but not listen to a lot of people,” Waugh further revealed. Waugh further went on to add that a captain should listen to only a few voices he really trusts and respects. “I think the problem is, or one of the hard things about captaincy is, you get a lot of advice from a lot of different people and they all want to tell you how to do it. You’ve got to work out who are the people you trust and stick to the ones … you really respect,” he said. “At the end of the day you’ve got to look in the mirror and make those tough decisions yourself and that was one of those moments where I thought, ‘I’m not doing it the right way, let’s turn it around and do it differently’. My leadership was about getting the best out of people. I really enjoyed seeing people fulfil their potential,” he added.
MS Dhoni has retired, so have I: Pakistan-born fan 'Chacha Chicago' says he will stop travelling for cricket SPORTS DESK In Karachi-born Mohammad Bashir Bozai's vow to give up watching India-Pakistan play at ICC events, obsessive fandom follows MS Dhoni into retirement, adding to things like jersey number and disciples such as Suresh Raina. Travelling the world to watch the archrivals in action doesn't make sense anymore to Bashir, aka 'Chacha Chicago', who endured abuses from Pakistani fans while cheering for Dhoni. The well-known chacha, instead, plans to visit Ranchi to meet the man whose sphere of influence spreads far and wide. "Dhoni has retired and so have I. I don't see myself travelling for cricket again with him not being around. I loved him and he loved me back," Bashir told PTI from Chicago, where he runs a restaurant. "All great players have to call time one day but his retiring makes me sad and brings back a lot of precious memories. He deserved a grand send-off but again he is beyond that," he added. THE BOND BETWEEN DHONI AND HIS FAMOUS PAKISTANI FAN: The un-
spoken bond between Bashir and Dhoni blossomed after the 2011 World Cup semifinal between the two countries. A ticket for the arguably the biggest game of the tournament in Mohali was a precious commodity but Dhoni arranged it for the 65-year-old, enough for him to "unconditionally love" the World Cup-winning captain for life. For someone who survived three heart attacks and cris-crossed the globe to see Dhoni in flesh and blood, cricket will never be the same. Now that he is done attending live games, his next stop is Ranchi. "I will go to his house in Ranchi when things get normal (post Covid-19 pandemic). That is the least I can do to wish him all the best for the future. I will also ask Ram Babu (another super fan, from Mohali, to come with me). "I would have travelled to see him in the IPL but there are travel conditions and with my heart condition, it is not safe to do so," said Bashir, whose wife hails from Hyderabad (India), a place he visited in January this year. WHEN MS DHONI SENT SURESH RAINA TO HELP CHACHA
CHICAGO: He says what makes his relationship special with the Dhoni is that they never interacted much during tournaments, most recently the 2019 World Cup in England, but the Indian legend was always there to help him before he could ask. "On some occasions, I did get some time with him, but in 2019, we could not interact much. But like always, he arranged a ticket for me. "And during the Asia Cup in 2018, he took me to his room and gave me his jersey. That was really special just like the two times when he gave me his bat. "When he did not have the time reach me, he sent a member of the support staff with the tickets. He did not have to do that but he did," said an emotional Bashir. BUT WHICH IS HIS MOST CHERISHED MEMORY AS A LIFELONG DHONI FAN? "This particular incident during the 2015 World Cup I can never forget. I was there for a game in Sydney and was sitting in the sun, it was extremely hot. "Suresh Raina came from nowhere and gave me sunglasses. He said ‘it is from Dhoni bhai not me’. I smiled back at him."
CMYK
Such was his loyalty to Dhoni that Bashir would openly cheer for India and for that, he, at times, had to endure abuses from Pakistani fans. "This one time in Birmingham, the Pak-
istani fans hurled choicest of abuses at me and even called me a ''Ghaddar'' (traitor). I had to ignore all of it. I love both countries and humanity comes first anyway," he signed off.
Tuesday, 18 August, 2020
PRAyER TImINGS
NEWS CIE results to be based on teachers' assessment SHAFQAT MAHMOOD SAYS CIE HAS CONFIRMED THAT STUDENTS' GRADES WON'T BE LESS THAN PREDICTED GRADES SENT BY SCHOOLS news desk Gavin Williamson and Ofqual have apologised to students and their parents, as they announced that all A-level and GCSE results in England will be based on teacher-assessed grades. In a spectacular U-turn, the education secretary announced the government would scrap the controversial standardisation model drawn up by the exams regulator to award grades in lieu of exams. Instead, both A-levels and GCSE results will revert to centre-assessed grades, which were submitted by schools earlier this summer. “We worked with Ofqual to construct the fairest possible model, but it is clear that the process of allocating grades has resulted in more significant inconsistencies than can be resolved through an appeals process,” Williamson said, in remarks released by his department. “We now believe it is better to offer young people and parents certainty by moving to teacher assessed grades for both A- and AS level and GCSE results. I am sorry for the distress this has caused young people and their parents, but hope this announcement will now provide the certainty and reassurance they deserve.” The climbdown comes after days of turmoil triggered by the publication of A-level results last Thursday, when almost 40% of predicted results were downgraded, with some students marked down two or even three grades, which resulted in many losing university places. The move had looked inevitable after Wales said it would revert to teacher assessments for A-levels, and Northern Ireland said it would do so for GCSEs, following a similar U-turn in Scotland last week. Hundreds of pupils took to the streets of London, demonstrating outside the Department for Education to express their anger, while others took to the airwaves and social media to describe their sense of devastation. Lawyers had began to consider taking action on behalf of affected teenagers. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, welcomed what he called the “screeching U-turn”, saying: “This is a victory for the thousands of young people who have powerfully made their voices heard this past week. However, the Tories’ handling of this situation has been a complete fiasco. “Incompetence has become this government’s watchword, whether that is on schools, testing or care homes. Boris Johnson’s failure to lead is holding Britain back.” Ministers had been under increasing pressure to act with GCSE results due to be published this Thursday for more than 600,000 year 11 pupils in England and 100,000 older students aiming for crucial passes in maths and English to qualify them for further training or study. The algorithm used by Ofqual for both A-levels and GCSEs was mainly based on a school’s past results and individual pupil attainment.
AGENCIES
For two and a half minutes, the popular Indian radio DJ described in graphic detail what she said was the torture and killing of a Christian father and son in police custody. The father was arrested for flouting coronavirus lockdown rules by keeping his mobile phone shop in southern India open past curfew, Suchitra Ramadurai alleged in a video posted to her Instagram. The man’s son went to check on him at the police station and both were beaten so badly they were still bleeding when they appeared before a judge the next day. Three days later, on June 23, they were both dead. “Please share this story,” Ramadurai told her followers. “Let’s fight the system.” The video, which was viewed 20 million times before police ordered Ramadurai to take it down, sparked an extraordinary groundswell of public outrage at the deaths with local opposition politicians marching in the streets, Bollywood stars voicing their condemnations and television stations holding hourslong debates on police brutality. Even rarer, 10 police officers were arrested in a federal investigation and charged with murder. The case came as global attention was focused on police abuse following the death of George Floyd in custody in the United States. It has renewed calls in India for re-
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HILE accusing the federal government of playing “psychological games” with him and his family, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Monday said that the regime was “threatening” him to change his critical stance on the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government otherwise his father, party colleagues and workers will “face the music”. Bilawal’s statement came after an accountability court in Islamabad announced
to indict his father, former president and PPP Co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari, in Toshakhana reference on September 9. Speaking to reporters outside the court, Bilawal said that his party had “stood up against military rulers, be it Yayha Khan, Ziaul Haq or Pervez Musharraf” and will continue to resist against the current “hybrid regime” as well. “We feel that we are being pressurised and threatened to toe the line, to follow the script, to agree to repeal the 18th Amendment, to alter the NFC [National Finance Commission] Award, to allow this house to pass a black law. But we will not budge from our stance,” he announced. “I want to say this through the media
that if you want to arrest my entire family, do it. We will not allow any harm to befall the 18th Amendment or the 1973 Constitution. Do whatever you want.” He also criticised National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) prosecutor for “abusing” Zardari’s counsel in the court, saying that the prosecutor resorted to such behaviour because he “did not have any arguments”. The PPP chief lamented that Zardari, who had obtained bail from the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on medical grounds last year, was ordered to personally appear before the court even though he had underlying conditions and was at risk of contracting Covid-19. He added that the hearing was ad-
Israel, UAE open phone link after peace deal dUBAI AGENCIES
A telephone service between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel has begun working as the two countries opened diplomatic ties, part of a deal brokered by the US that required Tel Aviv to suspend its contentious plan to annex the West Bank, a requirement Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to accept, saying it remains “on the table”. UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan called his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi, in what Israel hailed as an important step. Congratulating the UAE on “removing the blocks”, Israeli communications minister Yoaz Handel issued a statement on Sunday saying: “Many economic opportunities will open now, and these trust-building steps are an important step toward advancing states’ interests.” Associated Press journalists in Jerusalem and Dubai were able to call each other from both landlines and mobile phones registered to Israel’s country code +972 from around 1:15 pm. Also on Sunday, Israeli news websites that had previously been blocked by UAE authorities, such as the Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post and YNet, could be accessed without using means to by-
pass internet filtering in the Emirates. In the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, a recorded message in Arabic and English would typically play prior to Sunday saying calls to +972 numbers could not be connected. The advent of internet calling allowed people to get around the ban, although these too were often interrupted. Some in Israel used Palestinian mobile phones with +970 numbers, which those in the UAE could call. The connection of phone service represents the first concrete sign of the deal between the Emiratis and Israelis. Israel and the UAE announced on Thursday they were establishing full diplomatic relations in the US-brokered accord. The historic deal delivered a foreign policy victory to President Donald Trump as he seeks re-election and reflected the changing Middle East in which shared concerns about arch enemy Iran have largely overtaken traditional Arab support for the Palestinians. Palestinians say it puts a just resolution of the Middle East conflict even farther out of reach by undermining an Arab consensus that recognition of Israel only come in return for concessions in peace talks. That removes a rare source of leverage for the Palestinians. The agreement will make the UAE the third Arab country, after
form of what human rights advocates have described as a culture of abuse and impunity within the country’s police system. The response to the deaths of the father and son, if not unprecedented, was far from the norm in India, where police “routinely use torture and flout arrest procedures with little or no accountability,” said Jayshree Bajoria, the author of “Bound by Brotherhood,” a 2016 report on custodial deaths in India. “Often the entire system is complicit in shielding the police responsible for such abuses instead of ensuring accountability,” said Bajoria. According to the New Delhibased National Campaign Against Torture, 125 people died in police custody due to torture or other abuses in 2019. In internal reports police typically attribute such deaths to other causes such as suicide, preexisting illnesses or natural causes. However, in many cases documented by rights groups and governmentappointed investigators, the deaths were determined to be the result of torture. The country’s National Human Rights Commission said in its 2017 annual report that violence in custody was so rampant “that it has become almost routine,” adding that many custodial deaths were reported after a considerable delay or not reported at all. India’s Home Ministry, which is responsible for law and order, did not respond to requests for comment on the issue.
In India, suspected criminals are often killed in what police and military officials call “encounters,” such as one last month when a suspect wanted in connection with the deaths of eight police officers was fatally shot after police said he snatched a gun while trying to flee. Activists were quick to cast doubt on that account. Yet unlike the deaths of the father and son, that case was met with little public anger. Because the country’s clogged judicial system is too slow to ensure prosecutions and punishments, such killings are often encouraged by politicians, celebrated in popular Bollywood films, overwhelmingly supported by the public and rewarded by state officials with out-of-turn promotions and gallantry prizes to the police involved. Last December, on a visit to the crime scene, police shot dead four men suspected in the high-profile rape and killing of a young woman whose body had been set on fire. Hours after the shootings, about 2,000 people gathered at the site to celebrate, passing out sweets and showering police with flower petals. The slow pace of the Indian judicial system means it often takes years, even decades, for cases to reach completion. A backlog of tens of millions of pending court cases have significantly eroded the public faith in the system. “It is this declining faith in the system that has led
journed without any development in the case “so that Zardari would have to appear before the court and expose himself once again on another day”.
Pakistan begins phase-III trial of Covid-19 vaccine Egypt and Jordan, to have full, active diplomatic ties with Israel. The UAE and Israel announced it in a joint statement, saying deals between the two countries were expected in the coming weeks in such areas as tourism, direct flights and embassies. Early on Sunday, the Emirates’ state-run WAM news agency announced a UAE company had signed an agreement with an Israeli company for research and study of the coronavirus pandemic. The move has sparked anger among some who see it as a betrayal of longstanding efforts to establish an independent state of Palestinians. In Pakistan, hundreds of people rallied on Sunday to denounce the Emirati-Israeli deal. The opposition Jamaate-Islami chanted slogans against the US and burned effigies of Trump. They also set ablaze American and Israeli flags. The deal also has enraged Iran and Turkey, regional rivals of the UAE. On Sunday, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces called the UAE’s decision a “disaster”. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri urged Abu Dhabi to “revise” its position. “If an incident happens in the Persian Gulf and violates the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran, even a tiny bit, and we see it from the UAE, we will not tolerate it,” Bagheri said.
Lockdown deaths in India ignite debate on police brutality new deLHI
FAJR SUNRISE 4:47
many in India to demand and support instant justice,” said sociologist Kalpana Kannabiran. Indian courts and multiple human rights commissions have set out detailed procedures to prevent and punish such killings, but prosecution is rare. Between 2001 and 2018, 26 police officers were convicted of custodial deaths. “There are serious gaps in both outside accountability mechanisms and internal supervision,” said Maja Daruwala, executive director of the New Delhi-based rights organisation Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. “These cases expose long-term structural frailties and weakness that are allowed to remain within the system and repeatedly end in tragedies,” she said. Despite repeated demands for police reform, activists say education and training for police about human rights issues and proper investigatory techniques is woefully lacking. They also say police implicated in abuses, regardless of rank, must be prosecuted. Activists are also repeating their demands for India to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture and incorporate its provisions into the country’s domestic laws. India is among very few countries that have not ratified the convention. “India can only boast of rule of law if those charged with enforcing it are held accountable,” Bajoria said.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has begun phase-III of the clinical trial of a Covid-19 vaccine in the country after the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) approved the process on Monday. A spokesman for the National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad said that the vaccine under trial is the one being prepared by Chinese biotech firm, CanSino Biologics, and Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. “This is the first time that the country is going through the phase-III clinical trial of any Covid-19 vaccine,” he said and added that the Chinese company is already carrying out the clinical trial of the vaccine in Russia, Chile, Argentina and Saudi Arabia. The vaccine trial in Pakistan is being carried out under the supervision of the NIH head, who is the principal investigator of the programme. It is pertinent to mention here that a Pakistani pharmaceutical firm, AGM Pharma, has signed a contract with the Chinese company to conduct a clinical trial of the vaccine at the NIH. CanSino Biologics also recently won a patent approval from Beijing for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate Ad5-nCOV, state media reported, citing documents from the country’s intellectual property regulator. It is the first Covid-19 vaccine patent granted by China, state-owned newspaper People’s Daily reported. The paper cited documents published by China’s National Intellectual Property Administration saying that the patent was issued on Aug. 11. TLTP
IMF asks Pakistan to provide AML compliance certificate on coronavirus spending ISLAMABAD: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has asked Pakistan to provide the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance certificate with regard to the government's coronavirus package. According to sources, the IMF has written a letter to the Finance Ministry regarding AML compliance certificate for Rs1.2 trillion 'corona package' announced by the government to control the outbreak of coronavirus. The Washington-based lending organization had approved for Pakistan a Rapid Finance Instrument (RFI) equivalent to SDR 1015.5 million ($1.386 billion, 50pc of quota) to meet the urgent balance of payment needs stemming from the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.It is pertinent to mention that the prime minister’s Rs1.24 trillion (around $8 billion) fiscal stimulus package for Covid-19 control included emergency response, support to business and relief to citizens. Under the package, the government had given Rs90bn to National Disaster Management Authority, Rs50bn for medical equipment/incentives for workers, Rs100 billion for emergency provisioning/funds and Rs15bn tax relief on food & health items. Similarly, it also included Rs570bn relief to citizens, of which Rs200bn as relief to daily wage workers, Rs150bn Relief to vulnerable families & panagah, Rs70bn on petrol/diesel, Rs50bn funding to utility stores, Rs100bn power & gas subsidy/payment deferral measures, Rs480bn support to business & economy, Rs280bn payment to farmers (wheat), Rs100bn relief to exporters and Rs100bn fo relief to SMEs & agriculture sector. SHAHZAD PARACHA
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