ISLAMABAD - In order to make provisions for raising alert, response and recovery of missing and abducted children, the PTI government on Wednesday laid ‘The Zainab alert, response and recovery bill, 2019’ before the National Assembly.
The bill, moved by Minister for Human Rights Dr. Shireen Mazari, will raise the required alert and initiate the responses required for the recovery of missing abducted, abused or kidnapped children in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT). The statement of objects and reason of the bill says, “there is an urgent need to enact laws to provide a speedy system of alerts, responses, recoveries, investigations, trials and rehabilitation to prevent and curb criminal activities against the children in ICT. The bill will help to ensure harmonisation and cohesion in the working of the new agencies and institutions established for the protection of children and already existing mechanism within this field.
The current laws and procedures required to be strengthened to effectively monitor, trace or recover missing and abducted children, the bill said.
The bill proposed the punishment of death or with imprisonment for life or with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to fourteen years if a person abducted children under the age of eighteen years. It also suggests that if a person kidnaps or abducts a child under eighteen years of age with an intent to take immovable property shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 14 years.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan, responding to call-attention notice, said National Disaster Management Authority has provided relief assistance of over Rs204 million to the flood affected people belonging to Balochistan.
Provincial Disaster Management Authority, the minister said, in current crisis had played its part to provide maximum and immediate relief to the affected people. He said the National Disaster Management Authority has been directed to make immediate response mechanism. “We have provided ten thousand ration packets, tents, five hundred blankets and fifteen hundred plastic mats to the flood affectees,” he said. Parliamentary Secretary for Commerce Shandana Gulzar Khan, responding to another calling attention notice, said export of Pakistan to India had reduced after the Pulwama incident due to imposition of two hundred percent duties on Pakistani products by the Indian government.
Pakistan in past used to export 98 percent of its dried dates to India but now this export reduced due to extra duties imposed by India.
To a question, Parliamentary Secretary said incumbent government was making all out efforts to explore other markets to export our dates.