TAXILA: Punjab Governor Sardar Saleem Haider Khan on Sunday announced scholarships for 100 deserving students of his native area.

He was addressing people of his area at Dhurnal in Pindigheb town on Sunday.

The governor also announced tobear the marriage expenses of girls from marginalised classes of society.

The governor criticised the PML-N government in Punjab for what he described as flawed agriculture and health policies.

“Development and provision of facilities are only limited to Lahore and all the government hospitals of Punjab, including Attock, are in a bad condition as there is massive paucity of facilities and medical staff”, he lamented.

He criticised the Punjab government for its flawed wheat policy the previous year. He also accused the government of exploiting the peasant community, adding that the previous wheat season the PML government had fixed the official support price of 40kg wheat at Rs2100 of which the market price was Rs3900. This has broken the financial backbone of the wheat growers. He said despite increasing the wheat cultivation target for the district, the government had drastically cut the procurement target which forced them to sell their yield in the open market at lower rates. “Pakistan is an agricultural country, hence attention should be paid to the agriculture sector as it would boost the economy of the country,” he added.

He announced that he would soon present proposal of upgrading Pindigheb from tehsil to district level to address the backwardness of the people of the area especially in health, education and infrastructure to bring it par with the developed part of the province as this area was kept backward by the rulers since last many decades.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2024