Punjab PA bans private usury business

LAHORE: The Punjab Assembly unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday to impose a ban on private business of usury.

After the approval, severe punishments will be given to those engaged in the private business of loan-sharking after their crime is proven. MPA Khadija Umer presented the Punjab Prohibition of Interest on Private Loan Bill 2022. The assembly session was chaired by PA Speaker Muhammad Sibtain Khan.

In his address to assembly members, Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi said the private bill had been passed to ban the private business of usury throughout Punjab. The business of usury was a curse that the messenger of Allah (PBUH) disliked and prohibited. “I pay tribute to the House, the government and especially Imran Khan from the depths of my heart. I also thank the chief justice of the Lahore High Court for starting the process of monitoring religious education because, under his direction, civil judges are monitoring religious education in schools. Students will be provided Quranic Siparas free of cost. Education will now be given free up to BA along with textbooks. Work has been started on religion in grammar schools.”

Elahi said the government desired to save the new generation from immorality by giving them religious education. Children who got religious education would be an invincible generation, he said, adding that emergency upgrades and free medicines would be given in hospitals. In the past, commissions were fixed instead of recruitment of doctors and supply of medicines. The government was tripling the salary of emergency doctors and ban on recruitment would be lifted from next week, he disclosed.

He said the PMLN sat on jobs and in the past, blind people were beaten with sticks, but this government invited them to tea and asked for their forgiveness. The allowance for the blind had been restored and increased to Rs10,000. Teachers’ salaries would also be increased. Not only would the government start a teachers training programme for the blind but their number would also be increased.

He said MPAs would be given enough funds and development would be seen in their constituencies. New jobs would be created. The registry fee was going to be fixed at one per cent. “I left Rs100 billion cash in the previous period and Shehbaz Sharif left Punjab with debt of Rs1,000 billion. The government will take legal action and no one will escape the law. They are dividing the society, the province and the nation. These people consider themselves to be the great Mughals.”