PHC issues notices to 20 employees who benefited from BISP

PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court (PHC) has issued show cause notice to its 20 two employees who had received benefits from Benazir Income Support Programme.

According to a press release issued by protocol officer of the Peshawar High Court on Wednesday, the PHC has taken strict action against the employees of its establishment and the district judiciary who were getting benefits from the BISP. Upon the receiving the list of the beneficiaries from the government, there were total 221 employees of the establishment of Peshawar High Court and its benches, district judiciary, anti-terrorism courts and Labour courts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The PHC issued show-cause notices to its 22 employees serving under its establishment. All the district and session judges of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are also directed to proceed with strict disciplinary actions against those employees of their establishment, the press release added.

KMU says coronavirus testing capacity increased

The Khyber Medical University (KMU) Peshawar Public Health Reference Lab (PHRL) can daily perform 700 coronavirus tests.

A press release said coronavirus tests were underway at the PHRL and it should be noted that the frontline workers, including doctors, technologists, biosafety officers, technicians and support staff, who are working day and night in three shifts at the KMU Reference Lab, are extremely dedicated and performing their duty professionally at their life risk.

The communique said at the time of the coronavirus outbreak, the total tests capacity at KMU-PHRL was 40 per day.It was later increased to 400 at the first stage and now 700 tests were being conducted on a daily basis, it said, adding, in case of emergency, the capacity can be increased up to 1000 tests per day. KMU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Arshad Javaid said that the KMU-PHRL is a world-class laboratory where tests and other safeguards have been developed in accordance with the World Health Organization’s standards. Regarding the less percentage of tests as compared to other provinces, he said the discrepancy between the population of these provinces and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as keeping in mind the number of tests done in the private sector in these provinces was the basic reason behind the difference in the overall ratio of tests between KP and other provinces.

He said that all samples from different hospitals in the province were received under a specific protocol and the results are released within 24 hours without any delay. The vice-chancellor said there are no pending samples or any backlog in the laboratory and 6544 tests have been conducted so far out of which 1102 were positive and 5064 declared negative. He hoped that the provincial the government would increase the number of daily tests to about 3000 in the next few with the establishment of labs in Swat, DI Khan and Abbottabad.

PPP leader

seeks probe into corruption scandals

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) deputy Information Secretary Gohar Inqilabi on Wednesday asked the chief justice of Pakistan to order an investigation into the mega corruption scandals in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Talking to reporters here, he alleged that the people behind the sugar and flour crises were the same involved in corruption in the Malam Jabba, Billion Tree Tsunami and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects, but the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had adopted mum over the mega scandals.

He maintained that the NAB was unable to take action against the big fish and were trying to pressure the opposition leaders and the media into silence.

He said the PPP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had submitted an application with the NAB to take action against those responsible for the BRT fiasco but no action was taken.

The PPP leader alleged the NAB was being used for political engineering. He alleged that the previous PTI government led by former chief minister Pervez Khattak, now Federal Minister for Defense, had committed corruption in BRT and Malam Jabba land scam by awarding the contracts to his blue-eyed people.

Gohar Inqilabi said that Rs6 billion was spent on the beautification of roads before launching BRT.