ISLAMABAD: A special committee of Pakistan’s Senate (the upper house) will be taking up next week the thorny issue of the commercial use of hundreds of thousands of acres acquired by the armed forces for defence purposes, it was learnt.
The committee headed by Senator Afrasiab Khattak of the Awami National Party (ANP) will also take up the three-decade-old issue of non-payment of compensation to the villagers and owners of thousands of acres acquired by the military in Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for setting up a firing range.
The four-member committee was constituted by the parliament’s upper house on November 4 after the members expressed their dissatisfaction over the government’s reply on the issue of non-payment of compensation to the landowners in Nowshera despite orders of the superior courts.
The committee, also comprising Syed Zafar Ali Shah of the PML-N, Abbas Afridi from Fata and Kalsoom Parveen of the BNP-A, is scheduled to meet on Monday (Jan 6).
The committee is set to “examine the use of land for commercial projects by the defence ministry and to make appropriate recommendations”, says the agenda for the meeting.
The Senate has been debating the matter on a motion moved by Senator Farhatullah Babar of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in August last year.
INTERNEWS
