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ISLAMABAD, JULY 10 –  CEO PIA briefed the Prime Minister regarding ongoing negotiations with European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to ensure PIA flight operations for Europe.

Air Marshal Arshad Malik also briefed the Prime Minister regarding restructuring of PIA so as to make it a profitable and leading airline.

Prime Minister directed to expedite the restructuring plan in consultation with Advisor to PM on Institutional Reforms Dr. Ishrat Hussain and to present a framework in a week time.

Prime Minister emphasized that our Government has adopted across the board reforms agenda to make institutions efficient and service oriented.

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ISLAMABAD, JULY 10 –  Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development (OP&HRD) Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari on Friday said the government would soon launch ‘EOBI Sahulat Card’ to provide up to 10 percent subsidy to its 8 million beneficiaries on purchase of staple food from the utility stores.

The agreement to this effect was signed by the heads of Employees’ Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) and Utility Stores Corporation (USC) here to materialize the initiative of the OP&HRD ministry.

“The partnership between EOBI and USC is a landmark initiative for giving an impetus to the government departments’ efforts in materializing the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan to transform the country into a Madina-like welfare state,” he told the media here.

Zulfikar Bukhari said under the project, the card holding EOBI pensioners and insured person would get a subsidy of about Rs 1,000 per month on five essential food items such as wheat flour, oil, rice, grains and pulse.He said within just 20 months of its term, the government had increased the annuity of EOBI pensioners from Rs 5,250 to 8,500 which would be further upped to Rs 15,000 till end of its tenure.

The SAPM said the collaboration between the two organizations was meant to serve low-income people by giving them ration at the low rates. The card holders might even get more than 10 per cent discount on some edibles out of the selected food staples.

Zulfikar Bukhari urged the EOBI registered person to avail the card after its launch as the USC intended to add more facilities under this initiative.He said an extensive awareness campaign would be launched on electronic, print and social media to aware the EOBI pensioners and insured persons on it to make them get maximum benefit from the opportunity. EOBI Chairman Azhar Hameed said the ‘EOBI Sahulat Card’ would be launched by early next month (August).“In a first, there will be a soft launch of initiative and hundreds of people would be provided the card.” Later, the EOBI would start issuing cards to all of its beneficiaries, verified by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA). The USC Chairman Zulqarnain Ali Khan said the initiative was taken on the instruction of Prime Minister Imran Khan who had been strong proponent of uplifting the living standard of downtrodden segment of the society.

RAWALPINDI, July 10 (DNA) – Youth from the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad consolidated ‘Green Neighbourhood’ initiative here Friday in a virtual consultative meeting of the Islamabad Devcom Centennial Leo Club (IDCLC). Objective of the initiative is to engage young people and their families and friends to add value to the ongoing campaigns of clean and green cities.

Speaking about the concept of ‘Green Neighbourhood’, the IDCLC president Haares Munir said, Green Neighborhood means that the young citizens and their families and friends would be engaged to take care of their neighbourhood by keeping it clean from littering, domestic solid waste and flowing out sewage. The clean part of the initiative also includes personal hygiene including regular handwashing and safe water and sanitation messages.

The second part of the initiative, Haares Munir said, is to engage the citizens of all ages to make their own neighbourhood green by protecting the green cover around them and add more sustainable plantation of saplings. Streets and the neighborhood area that meets the needs of peoples’ daily activities and allows communities to control pollution and water abuse, and to promote energy conservation and developing neighbourhood bonding to improve social security. It would surely improve natural and social environment.

Environmentalist Mome Saleem appreciated youth for chalking out a citizens’ centric initiative to improve local environment. Every citizen needs to contribute to clean up the surroundings and to enhance environmental conditions.

She said different parts of Rawalpindi especially needs citizens interventions to keep in clean and green. The local youth could play a pivotal role in it.

She also educated the participants of the consultation on the advocacy skills to broadly engage the citizens in clean and green initiatives voluntarily.

Shanzay said Citizens are doing good in Islamabad, the IDCLC volunteers shall focus on the congested areas in Rawalpindi where littering, domestic waste management and garbage collection are the main issues.

Saalis Ahmad asked for a green portal where buyers and seller of plats and seeds could interact and facilitate each other. He suggested different communication means to send the message across to the local stakeholders.

highlighted the importance of recycling of different waste materials and to use them in different ways in daily life. She also put up the idea of taking care of birds by feeding them and arranging water pots for the birds and stray animals.

Neighbourhood is widely recognised as a fundamental building block of a city, and a good starting point to create a truly sustainable community. Green neighbourhood is also broadly defined as being moderately dense, mixed-use, designed at a human scale, active and public transportation oriented and literally “green”. A green neighbourhood assessment system is a tool that evaluates sustainability performance of a given neighbourhood against a set of criteria. This paper evaluates 20 major international green neighbourhood assessment systems in according to their sustainability coverage and features. Sustainability aspects used in this paper include transportation, infrastructure, ecology, resources, energy, community, location, economy and building. The results of this study show that community, resources and ecology are the three major sustainability aspects that applied in 18, 17 and 16 out of 20 assessment systems respectively. However, after assessing the sustainability aspects by their weightings in the assessment systems, the differences among them are reduced and their rate of importance in all the assessment systems became closer. Ecology, energy, transportation, resources and economy receive the highest weightings after affecting by their weightings and incredibly community dropped to the very low importance of weightings. Regarding regional distribution of the systems around the world, initiative of green neighbourhood assessment system was first started in United Kingdom and European Union in 2000 and 2004 respectively and this trend reached to United States in 2005. Meanwhile, LEED (ND) with 184 certificates/projects is the main well-known systems in the world followed by Envirodevelopment in Australia and SPeAR in the United Kingdom with 100 certificates/projects each. It is also found that the highest certification fee (minimum) is LEED (ND) with US$30,000 followed by Green Star (Communities) and CASSBEE and the highest evaluation fee (maximum) goes back to DGNB followed by LEED (ND) and Green Star (Communities). Future research can be conducted on the implementation of several green neighbourhood assessment systems on actual projects and compare their capabilities in measuring the rate of greening.DNA

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DNA

ISLAMABAD, – JULY 10 –  Federal Ministers Fakhar Imam, Mr. Asad Umar, Senator Shibli Faraz, Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar, Finance Advisor Dr. Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, SAPM for Information & Broadcasting Lt. Gen. (R) Asim Saleem Bajwa, SAPM Dr. Shahbaz Gill, Chairman NDMA and senior officers attended the briefing. Chief Ministers of Punjab, Sindh & Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; and Chief Secretary Balochistan participated via video link.

The Prime Minister was informed that National Action Plan for Locust Control Phase-I has been completed.Engineer-in-Chief Pakistan Army / National Coordinator NLCC Lt Gen Moazzam Ijaz gave a detailed briefing on locust control measures in affected areas of the country.

The Prime Minister was also briefed about the coordinated efforts being made for monitoring, survey & control, inter-organizational coordination, resource allocation & mobilization and awareness campaign for locust control at national, provincial and districts’ levels.

The meeting was informed that due to the trans-boundary nature of locust swarm movement, close liaison with the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and affected countries in the region was being maintained to take timely pre-emptive measures.

The Prime Minister appreciated the governments of China, Japan and UK for providing technical and other assistance for locust control.It was informed that a locust swarm movement is expected from Horn of Africa via Iran and another from India, for which necessary control measures are in place.

Prime Minister accorded in-principle approval for Phase-II of the National Action Plan for Locust Control. It was also decided that the affected farmers would also be compensated through this package.Prime Minister highly appreciated timely and coordinated response of federal and provincial governments, including Pakistan Army, for effectively controlling locust attack and use of indigenously developed equipment.Prime Minister stated that locust attack combined with COVID-19 was a huge challenge for the Pakistan.PM said that the Government would undertake every possible effort for locust control since it involved food security of the country. The Prime Minister emphasized that a coordinated national response of federal and provincial governments and organisations is required to cope with the expected locust swarm so that crop production is not affected.

DNA

ISLAMABAD: The Government of Pakistan has promoted Air Vice Marshal Aamir Masood to the rank of Air Marshal; while, 10 Air Commodores have been promoted to the rank of Air Vice Marshal.  The promoted Air Officers from GD(P) branch include:-

1. Air Vice Marshal Amir Rashid
2. Air Vice Marshal S Fauad Masud Hatmi
3. Air Vice Marshal Muhammad Jamal Arshad
4. Air Vice Marshal Zaffar Aslam
5. Air Vice Marshal Muhammad Sarfraz
6. Air Vice Marshal Kazim Hammad
7. Air Vice Marshal Shakil Ghazanfar

Whereas promoted Air Officers from the Engineering branch are:-

1. Air Vice Marshal Irfan Zaheer
2. Air Vice Marshal Asif Maqsood
3. Air Vice Marshal Muhammad Amir Hayat

QUETTA : An additional sessions court here on Friday issued non-bailable warrants for the arrest of Senator Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti in a case related to aiding and abetting the abduction of a minor girl.

The court directed Quetta police to arrest the accused and present him in the court.

The arrest warrants came a day after the Supreme Court rejected Bugti’s plea for interim bail. A two-judge bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel, had dismissed the bail plea yesterday.

Quetta’s Bijli Ghar police station had registered a case against the former Balochistan home minister over his alleged role in the abduction of a girl on her mother’s complaint.
Earlier, on Jan 16, the additional sessions court turned down Sarfaraz Bugti’s bail application in the case and ordered his arrest. He, however, fled the court. Later, he approached the Balochistan High Court for bail.

The high court granted him pre-arrest bail but later rejected it on June 23. Subsequently, he, as a last resort, moved the Supreme Court requesting it to grant him interim bail in the case.