Tuesday, 1 June, 2021 I 20 Shawwal, 1442 I Rs 15.00 I Vol XI No 331 I 12 Pages I Karachi Edition
Govt aiminG to vaccinate enouGh people to avoid eid restrictions g
Vaccination of people aged 18-29 from Thursday: minister
ISLAMABAD StAff RePoRt
F
EdErAL Minister for Planning, development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar on Monday stated that the government aims to vaccinate a large number of people through July so the country can avoid any restrictions during Eid-ul-Adha. Addressing a media briefing after a session of the National Coordination Committee, that minister said that seven million vaccines had been administered in Pakistan so far with 5.2 to 5.3 million people vaccinated. The eventual goal by the year’s end was to reach 70 million people, he added. “According to our figures, more than 7 million vaccine doses have been administered and some 5.2 to 5.3 million people are included in this who have been vaccinated,” he said. The federal minister said that the target by the year’s end was to inoculate 70 million people across Pakistan with a particular emphasis on achieving vaccination rates at a
sufficiently high level in June and July so that strict and difficult restrictions would not be required before Eid-ul-Adha as had been placed on Eid-ul-Fitr. He added that the federal government had arranged more than 10 million vaccines for this with much more to follow. “Just in the month of June we will have more than 10 million vaccines and then in July a further 10 million,” he said, adding that availability of vaccines had now been ensured despite it still being a issue in some countries. “The NCOC has worked in coordination with the provinces and the provinces have considerably increased their capacity at vaccination centres,” said the federal minister, crediting it as the reason behind Pakistan’s inoculation boost from a few hundred at the start to 383,000 administrations the day before yesterday. “We want to more than double this figure,” said Asad, while stressing the need to further increase vaccination capacity in the provinces and federal territories due to complaints regarding extended waiting times in some vaccination centres of urban centres.
coronavirus in
pakistan
CONFIRMED CASES:
921,053
LAST UPDATED AT 7:21 AM ON MAY 31, 2021
DAY'S DEATH TOLL:
NEW CASES:
43
2,117
RECOVERED:
DEATHS:
841,241 20,779 SINDH:
PUNJAB:
317,665
339,686
KP:
BALOCHISTAN:
132,549 AJK/GB: 19,232 / 5,578
25,148 ISLAMABAD:
81,195
Moreover, the government will begin inoculating people in the 18-29 age group from Thursday, Asad announced separately, after a decision to widen the gap between doses to inoculate more people faster was taken. “With this step, the vaccination of all eligible age groups would be carried out. Please register as soon as possible,” he said in a tweet. The government opened up the coronavirus vaccination campaign to everyone aged 19 or older last week. The authorities initially had to deal with vaccination hesitancy and a shortage of vaccine supplies and had limited shots to people aged 30 or over. But with purchases from China and allocations from the World Health Organisation and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, the government has now secured more than 18 million doses and is keen to get them out into the population. So far, government vaccines have been free, and private hospitals have been permitted to sell shots at uncapped prices. Strict restrictive measures backed by vaccination have enabled a declining trend of the positivity rate as the country reported a rate below 5 percent for the seventh day on Sunday, the National Command and Operation Center said on Monday. According to data released by the NCOC, the government agency leading the fight against the pandemic, the health authorities conducted 52,223 tests on Sunday nationwide, detecting 2,117 new coronavirus infections with a positivity rate of 4.05 percent. In March and April, the nation witnessed a positivity ratio of over 11 percent several times, leading the government to impose strict measures, including the closure of educational institutions, markets, public parks, wedding halls, restaurants, public transport and all other venues of mass gatherings, especially during the Eid-ul-Fitr holidays. In May, the positivity rate dropped to over 9 percent and went down further to below 5 percent, the official data showed.
$500m green bond launched to finance Diamer, Mohmand dams ISLAMABAD StAff RePoRt
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday launched the country’s first green Eurobond by Water and Power development Authority to meet the financial needs concerning the construction of the diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dam projects. The bond has been floated for 10 years to raise $500 million at a competitive price of about 7.5 percent interest rate. The prime minister lauded the WAPdA chief and his team for the landmark achievement of securing bonds in the international market, at the launch ceremony of the bond held at the Prime Minister’s House. Imran expressed satisfaction over the interest of leading international investors in Eurobond, saying it reflected their confidence in the government and WAPdA. He lauded the body for the fast pace of construction of dams, which he said was vital to produce clean energy for a green environment and save the coming generations. The prime minister said that the “decade of dams” project, initiated in 2018 should have been worked up five decades ago to ensure water security. “Ten dams to be built in next 10 years will produce 10,000-megawatt clean electricity. It is a step of thinking about our next generations,” he emphasised. He stressed the long-term planning instead of a short-term election-to-election approach to carry out development projects in the country. He regretted that short-term planning in electricity generation resulted in the commodity’s highest per unit rate compared with the rest of the countries in South Asia.
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Gwadar Port becomes operational, expected to generate considerable economic activity and jobs GWADAR APP
After becoming fully operational, the Gwadar Port and Gwadar Free Zone would generate economic activities of around $10 billion per annum, besides creating thousands of new jobs, China Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority Chairman Lt Gen (r) Asim Saleem Bajwa said on Monday. “Soon after completion of the Gwadar Free Zone, a lot of manufacturing and trading activities will start, cargoes will move, and transshipment activities will increase,” Asim Bawa said while talking to the media after reviewing the Gwadar Port and other projects under CPEC. He further said, “We will continue to monitor the development work in Gwadar till all the projects become fully operational”. Asim Bajwa said the port’s infrastructural work had been completed by the China Port Holding Company at the cost of around $300 million, and its all the four berths were fully operational. He stated that during the last few months, over 67,000
metric tons of cargo had been handled at the port, comprising consignments mostly under the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement, which were then later transported to Afghanistan. A vessel carrying 8,000 cubic feet liquefied petroleum gas was due at the port on Tuesday, while another ship with 24,000 MT of diammonium phosphate fertilizer and feed cargo slated for Afghanistan would soon arrive in Pakistan from Australia, he added. They had built the port handling capacity, while the customs system was also in place to facilitate the investors and traders, Bajwa said. “Now our full emphasis is to increase the port traffic for which we are pursuing the logistic companies to establish their offices in the city,” he said. With regard to the Gwadar Port Free Zone, Asim Bajwa said its first phase spreading over 60 acres of land had already been completed, with 47 enterprises registered. Six factories had been completed, three of them were now fully operational, while six others were under construction.
For the last three years, he said, both the port and free zone had created some 1,200 direct jobs, while 12,000 more persons were hired for building the support infrastructure. Asim Bajwa said the second phase of Gwadar Port Free Zone would spread over 2,221 acres of land and Prime Minister Imran Khan would perform its groundbreaking ceremony. He added that the China Port Holding Company had already lined up an investor for the second phase, wherein said investor would need some 1,600 acres of land. The investor had pledged a direct investment of $3 billion in the single industry that would create 30,000 jobs. sim Bajwa pointed out that the Eastbay Expressway would directly take the cargo from port to M-8 for onward shipment to Karachi and the rest of the country. Some 94 percent of work on the expressway had been completed, and would hopefully be inaugurated in September, he informed.
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