Page 161 - Development Programme News Today

Hiring of contractors to be done transparently APP August 04, 2021 LAHORE: Punjab Chief Secretary (CS) Jawwad Rafique Malik on Tuesday urged the departments concerned to continue with focused efforts in their sectors to ensure proper utilisation of public funds. He stated this while chairing a meeting of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) 2021-22 to review provinces development profile and in particular the status of ADP 2021-22 in perspective of allocated budget, releases and utilisation...

Empowering women July 26, 2021 Gender equality is considered a vital factor in determining the overall wellbeing and growth of a nation, country and a society. Gender equality is when people of all genders have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities. The Sustainable Development Goal No 5 talks about achieving “gender equality and empowering all women and girls”. In addition to SDG 5, there are gender-related targets in other goals pertaining to health, education, water and sanit...

Thomas Koelble is Professor of Business Administration at the UCT Graduate School of Business. There is remarkable consistency in the South African debate on the political economy. The refrain since 1994 has been the same — we must create jobs, we must create employment, we must create opportunities for upward socioeconomic movement. The famous Reconstruction and Development Programme, despite being criticised as a “laundry list of wishes and goals”, set the tone for more than 25 years of...

Seven tragic days in July: Trying to make (some) sense of South Africa by hearing old themes with new(er) clarity Jeff Rudin The untold tragedies of our days in July 2021 urge us to continue dreaming. This is how we change ourselves and the world that creates us as we, reciprocally, create, sustain and pass it on to everyone else. For us as South Africans, we can begin realising Martin Luther King’s dream by moving way beyond the chimeral securities of race and its racial thin...

Unlike the early contributions – including those in Daily Maverick’s “Age of Anarchy” series of 15 July 2021 – I, with the luxury of thinking time, might be able to suggest layers of complexity difficult to reach by the demands of instant comment. Underlining these commentaries is the need for introspection, distilled into two fundamental questions: how did we get here and what is to be done? The single dominant answer to both is various forms of the failure of Transformation. This i...

Jul 21, 2021 Technical staff of the KVKs are regularly trained on latest agricultural technologies for upgrading their knowledge and skill. Management Development Programme is organized for the newly recruited heads of the KVKs for better management of KVKs. KVK Portal has been developed to integrate all the KVKs of the country for online monitoring and management of KVKs and to disseminate useful knowledge and technologies to farmers The KVKs are provided with different demonstration units, fa...

LETTER | Who will be the loser in durian fiasco? A LETTER | What’s next after the enforcement at Batu Talam Forest Reserve? I applaud the Pahang Forestry Department for the recent enforcement operation against illegal plantations at the Batu Talam Permanent Forest Reserve, Raub. The illegal durian farm fiasco and uproar have certainly brought to light a few points. The most obvious one is whether the issue of encroachment is new or has it been perpetuated through the decades? Illegal farming...

July 20, 2021 PESHAWAR: Chief Minister Mahmood Khan has directed the quarters concerned to ensure physical progress on new and ongoing road projects aimed at promotion of tourism activities in the province. He issued the directives while chairing a meeting regarding construction of access roads to tourism sites, said a handout. Besides Provincial Minister Ishtiaq Urmar, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Amjad Ali Khan, administrative secretaries and other officials attended the meeting. Th...

Decision to limit govt role in wheat procurement hailed DNA Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Sunday lauded the government’s decision to curtail its role in wheat procurement to allow the private sector to play a bigger part. The World Bank has suggested reducing the public sector’s role in wheat procurement to maintain strategic reserves – which has prompted to reduce procurement target from 4.2 million tonnes to 3.5 million tonnes – which is a step in the right directio...

The food debt was hovering around Rs400bn until the end of the last financial year (2019-20). — AP/File LAHORE: Punjab’s food sector circular debt has risen to a staggering Rs560bn, equal to the Annual Development Programme for the year 2021-22, giving a nightmare to the finance wizards in the province. Punjab harvested a bumper wheat crop, about 22 million tonne this season and the department procured at least 3.5 million tonne of it at a rate of Rs1,800 per maund (40kg). The food debt was...