by Shafqat Ali

 

ISLAMABAD, Sep. 24 (Gwadar Pro) – Pakistan’s Parliamentary Committee on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on Wednesday constituted a Sub-Committee to scrutinize the Socio-Economic Development Projects under $ 1 billion grant by the Chinese government to launch pilot projects to reduce poverty.  

 

The Sub-Committee comprises parliamentarians Mehnaz Akber Aziz, Raza Rabani Khar, Zahid Akram Durrani, and Noor Alam Khan as its Convener.

 

China has already extended $ 300 million for different programmes this year. It is worthy to note that $ 100 million has been diverted to agriculture to meet urgent needs of the sector. 

 

The areas of housing and healthcare have been offered $100 million each for meeting basic needs of people. The assistance is part of the overall social development programme under CPEC.  

 

Last year a 13-member expert group from China had shortlisted around 20 projects for implementation within a year in all the four provinces and special areas - Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan - to be funded with Chinese grant under socioeconomic cooperation.  

 

The Chinese government had agreed to provide up to $ 1 billion grant for socioeconomic development and poverty reduction projects under the CPEC on the request of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government. The socioeconomic development and poverty reduction initiatives were earlier part of the CPEC long-term plan.

  

It was decided to have six burn centres across the country - in four provinces and two special areas - where space and infrastructure could be made available at the existing hospital buildings so that Chinese grant could be utilised to install equipment and modern ventilators etc. The project is easy to execute and can be completed within few months since the infrastructure is already available in the hospitals. 

 

Since the burn centres already existed in major hospitals of Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, it was decided to have one in Hyderabad or Sukkur in Sindh, Bawalpur in Punjab and Dera Ismail Khan or Swat in Khyber Pakhtunkhaw. The centre for Balochistan will be developed in Quetta as patients with burn injuries were currently being transported to Karachi. 

 

Besides health sector, other projects for grant assistance were shortlisted in areas of water supply, education and fisheries and agriculture. The four provinces and AJK and GB had come up with more than 100 projects in various sectors but the two sides decided to focus on around two dozen with shortest possible gestation. 

 

During the eighth Joint Coordination Committee meeting of CPEC held in Beijing last December, a Joint Working Group (JWG) on socioeconomic development was established to devise an action plan. A memorandum of understanding in this regard as well as on poverty reduction was signed during Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to China in November last year.

 

The JWG had identified six areas for future cooperation including education, agriculture, poverty alleviation, skill development, healthcare, water supply and vocational training projects.