Two more rainwater reservoirs approved

LAHORE:After success of rainwater harvesting project at Lawrence Road, the governing body of Lahore Development Authority (LDA) has given a go-ahead for replicating this model at two more places in the provincial capital.

The decision was taken in the 5th meeting of LDA’s governing body chaired by its Vice-Chairman SM Imran here Thursday. The Authority’s Director General Ahmad Aziz Tarar briefed the meeting about implementation status of decisions taken in the previous meeting. It was decided that two of the new rainwater reservoirs would be constructed at Tajpura and outside Sheranwala Gate, Circular Road, Lahore.

Officials said that rainwater reservoirs with a capacity of 1.2 and 1.5 million gallons respectively would be constructed at these places, costing a total of Rs240 million. A total of 11 similar projects will be undertaken in the city for this purpose under a phased programme. In order to reduce pollution and improve city’s environment, the governing body allowed for Dense Urban Forestation at 24 places in LDA housing schemes. A sum of Rs150 million has been allocated in the new budget of LDA for tree plantation.

The meeting approved the project concept for integration of geographical information of plots situated in LDA housing schemes with the ownership record by designing GIS, MIS and integrated business work flow application for LDA. The meeting approved proposal for revision of PC-I for Firdous Market Underpass Project due to higher rate of compensation for land acquired for this project. However, cost of the project will not affect as a result of this revision of PC-I. The meeting was attended by MPA Sadia Sohail Rana and Muhammad Atif. Wasa Vice-Chairman Sheikh Imtiaz Mahmood, Managing Director Syed Zahid Aziz, Major (r) Syed Burhan Ali, Engineer Amir Qureshi and representatives of P&D, housing, local government, finance department and commissioner Lahore also attended the meeting.

tax: The ePay Punjab, the first-ever government payment aggregator for citizen facilitation and ease of business, has collected over Rs 1.82billion in tax revenue from multiple levies across Punjab with 525,339 record transactions in July 2020. Officials said ePay Punjab provides general public a stress-free and efficient method of paying all taxes and payments to the government without going through the cumbersome process. This was stated in a progress review meeting chaired by Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) Chairman Azfar Manzoor on Thursday. Director General IT-Operations Faisal Yousuf and other senior officials also attended the meeting. The meeting was informed that the initiative has proved to be a game changer in the local FinTech industry by playing a pivotal role in increasing tax revenue collection of the province and improving financial inclusion. During COVID-19, ePay Punjab has played an important part to make it easy for public to avoid visiting Public offices for payment of taxes and levies.