Cabinet body decides to lease state land through open auction

LAHORE Provincial Minister for Law Raja Basharat has stressed for devising a transparent and open policy to lease out the state land in future in order to generate maximum revenue.

He stated this while chairing a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Legislative Business at Civil Secretariat on Tuesday. Provincial ministers Sibtain Khan, Raja Yasir Hamayun, Mohsin Leghari and Hasnain Bahadur Dreshak were also present.

The meeting was held to review the proposed amendments to the Punjab Lease Policy for state lands. The house unanimously decided that in future all leases and sale of state land would be made through open auction, and steps would be taken to enhance the existing rent of leased out state lands on a par with the market rates.

Raja Basharat directed the departments concerned to ensure 100 per cent recovery of the arrears from the lessees and also scrutinise the status of the organisations occupying state land on lease since years.

He wanted to decrease the period of lease to maximum three years. The law minister sought a complete report from the Board of Revenue stating how many Lumbardars in Punjab had been given proprietary rights of Lumbardari grants. He ordered the officers to stop any kind of privatisation of state lands until the Punjab Privatization Board was revived.

social welfare: Provincial Minister for Social Welfare and Baitul Maal Muhammad Ajmal Cheema has said that it takes time to improve things better. The former rulers left the country in a deplorable condition and the current government is working hard to improve the situation. He stated this while talking to journalists during his visit to Social Welfare Complex on Tuesday. The minister said that no country could make progress without investing in education, health and welfare projects. “Our focus is provision of best education facilities and proper health care to the people,” he added. Muhammad Ajmal Cheema said the previous government did not pay attention to the Social Welfare Department. “We took over it in a very disastrous condition and worked a lot to improve it,” he claimed. The provincial minister visited the welfare institutes, Aafiat, Gehwara, Chaman, Darul Falah and Darul Sakon at the complex. He met the residents there and inspected the facilities provided to them.

Later, Punjab Minister Muhammad Ajmal Cheema chaired a meeting and was briefed on the matters of the department. The minister directed the officers to work diligently and warned that negligence would never be tolerated.

Wasa: Punjab Finance Minister Makhdoom Jawan Bakht Hashim Tuesday instructed the departments concerned to prepare workable business plan and introduce it with the budget estimations in annual fiscal year of 2019-20. The minister chairing a meeting of ministerial committee for Water and Sanitation Authority (Wasa) said that making the institutions self-dependent was crucial for improvement of the service delivery. The meeting was also attended by Minister Housing Mian Mehmood-ur-Rahseed and other officials of planning and development, local government and finance department. The objective of the meeting was to review the financial constraints faced by the Wasa. The minister said that the objectivity of the subsidy is to provide facilities to the lower strata of life not for feeding the institutions. Water shortage will create major troubles in future and to avoid such situation there is a need to launch water storage, recycling of water projects on priority basis, besides ensuring installation of water meter across all the cities in the province, the minister said.