IT, petroleum ministers meet PM
ISLAMABAD (APP): Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif held separate meetings with Minister of State for Information and Technology Anousha Rehman and Minister for Petroleum Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at the PM’s House here on Friday. The meetings were focused on the matters related with the ministries. Anousha apprised the Prime Minister about her ministry’s efforts for promotion of information technology in country. The Petroleum minister presented a cheque of Rs 200 million, for PM’s Fund for IDPs, to the Prime Minister. Jam Kamal Khan, Minister of State for Petroleum, Abid Saeed, Secretary Petroleum and Zahid Muzaffar, Advisor to Ministry of Petroleum were also present.
170 engineers complete one-month internship programme at NTDCL
LAHORE (Staff Reporter): More than 170 engineering students of 29 public and private universities of the country have completed their internship programme at National Transmission and Dispatch Company Limited (NTDCL) started a month ago, who had joined with a view to enhance their technical and managerial skills. A ceremony for distribution of certificates and stipend was held here at Wapda House Lahore on Friday. Managing Director NTDC Engr Tahir Mahmood said that this training programme will play a vital role to enrich the academic career and provide them off-hand opportunities, where knowledge from theoretical work is applied in real terms.
He hoped that the students would have ascertained ample opportunities of learning during the process of internship with various departments of NTDC, a company known as backbone of power sector.
MD NTDC wished and prayed for better learning and prosperous future of young internees/ engineers of various universities of Pakistan and looked forward for their contribution toward national development of power sector.
Director General Human Resource NTDC Muhammad Gulzar Sheikh declared that this is a country’s biggest internship programme. The experienced manpower of elite departments of NTDC like design, system protection, power planning, grid system construction and grid system operations have delivered their professional prowess towards young internees.
Later, MD NTDC and DG HR gave away certificates and stipend of Rs 5,000 to every student.
General Manager GSO, GM GSC, GM Planning Power, GM CPPA, Chief Engineer System Protection, Telecom, Design and others official were also present on the occasion.
Rs2b to be spent on achieving
MDGs: minister
LAHORE (APP): The Punjab government will spend Rs 2 billion to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) during the current fiscal year. These views were expressed by Provincial Minister for Excise & Taxation and Finance Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman while addressing party workers here on Friday. He said the government had provided record funds for health and education sectors. For education, Rs 274 billion have been allocated which is 26.25 percent of the total budget of the province, he added. He said that by increasing the health budget up to Rs 121.80 billion, the present government had ensured modern health facilities and free medicines to poor people.
He said people of rural and remote areas were also being provided with treatment facilities through mobile health units and Rs 1 billion had been provided for the purpose.
He said that a huge sum of Rs 47.44 billion would be spent for treatment and upgrade of hospitals during the current financial year.
Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman said that Rs 4 billion had been provided for health insurance cards.
Newly-imported Chinese
locomotives ‘working well’
LAHORE (APP): Newly imported nine Chinese locomotives have become part of the system and performing well. In a statement, a Pakistan Railways spokesman on Friday rejected a news item in which six out of nine locomotives were declared out-of-order. He said that new locomotives were computerised and there was no trouble in their working and train operation had been running smoothly. He clarified that 15 computerised locomotives were already successfully working in the system. The PR administration has allocated locomotives for 13 Eid special trains for smooth operation of trains.
Sindh constitutes sugar board
karachi (APP): Sindh government has decided to constitute Sindh Sugar Board to increase sugarcane production and development of the related industry in the province. The Board will be chaired by secretary agriculture Sahib Soomro having two members each from department of agriculture, sugar mills association and agriculture organization. The decision was taken in a meeting chaired by Sindh agriculture minister Ali Nawaz Mahar here on Friday. Representative of sugar mills and agriculture organizations, secretary agriculture, DG agriculture extension Hidayatullah Chhajro, DG research Atta Muhammad Soomro and other officials attended the meeting.
Agriculture minister called for introducing new varieties of sugarcane and promotion of modern technology to enhance production.
Sugar mills association suggested that industrialists and agriculturists be made part of research on sugarcane to achieve better results.
The meeting was briefed that Ghotki has the highest production ratio of sugarcane that is 11.75 percent while 9.5pc recorded in other districts of the province.