News
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Pakistan can’t progress without inter-provincial harmony, says Aziz* Wants revived IPCC to become result-oriented institution
* Calls for national interest to prevail over partisan politicsISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Monday that the Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee (IPCC) had been revived to promote understanding and harmony between the provinces and the federation regarding national interest issues.
Addressing the committee’s inaugural session, the prime minister said that the IPCC needed to work towards removing inter-provincial gridlock to become a truly result- and action-oriented institution. Acknowledging that the existence of political differences was a normal feature of a democratic framework, Aziz went on to stress that the country needed to speak in one voice on issues of national importance.
He said that the national interest should always prevail over partisan politics to forge unity, otherwise the country would not be able to progress. “If there is unity, even the enemy can do no harm to the country.”
Aziz said that the people of Pakistan recently demonstrated the finest example of unity in the aftermath of last October’s devastating earthquake, when every house – in Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and NWFP – transformed itself into a relief camp to help those directly affected by the disaster.
This, he said “was clearly our finest hour as a nation”.
On the country’s economy, the prime minister said that Pakistan had come a long way from the period seven years earlier when the economy had virtually become bankrupt.
“Today there is political and economic stability,” he said, adding that since President General Pervez Musharraf took office, the government now had the resources to tackle economic difficulties.
However, he said that the country still faced additional challenges, such as reducing poverty rates further, creating more jobs and increasing nationwide literacy rates.
“We need to ensure that the fruits of economic growth reach the common man, “ he added.
Aziz said that the government, having secured economic stability, was now focusing on transferring the benefits of growth to the general public, the results of which could already be seen in the decline of both poverty and commodity price rates.
Seventy five percent of essential items in Pakistan, he said, were being sold at prices that represented the lowest rates in the region, while the country’s per capita income was the region’s highest.
Aziz went on to say that all provincial governments should ensure that the prices of essential items remained stable during the holy month of Ramzan, adding that Price Magistrates should keep a vigilant check on market prices.
The prime minister also stressed the need to take effective measures to strengthen inter-provincial interaction at the grass roots level, recommending that various institutions be directed to arrange activities in which students and youths of all provinces could participate.
He also said that since the country had come into being in the name of Islam, Pakistan, the Ummah and Islam were one an the same thing. staff report
Courtesy DailyTimes.com.pk