Ring Road PC-I sent to Punjab govt without NHA approval

A new controversy was unearthed regarding the project concept (PC) I for the Ring Road as it has been learnt that National Highway Authority (NHA) had expressed reservations on the alignment in 2018. Sources told The Express Tribune that NHA’s biggest objection was the traffic load, according to which some 33,000 heavy vehicles would land on the Islamabad motorway daily from GT Road through the Ring Road. The authority had not issued a non-objection certificate (NOC) yet the PC I was sent to the Punjab government for final approval. NHA had expressed that such a high influx of vehicles would damage the structure of the motorway and increase the rush at toll plaza. The second objection raised by the authority was that the transporters using the Ring Road would have to pay toll tax at three spots over the 36-kms route and no transporter would be willing to pay it on such a short distance. Read 131b minted after RRR realignment: sources They maintained that the project cannot be implemented without NOC from the authority despite the government’s approval. Sources added the NHA is a federal body that cannot be taken into confidence at the provincial level. Over the objections raised by NHA, a senior officer of Ring Road Project Management Unit (PMU) told The Express Tribune that the project would be constructed on the previous alignment. He added that the administration would address NHA’s concerns through negotiations once PC I is approved. Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2021.

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‘Only 4 labour officers for 63 brick kilns in ICT’

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has learnt that there are only four labour officers for 63 brick kilns and factories in the federal capital. IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah presided over a case pertaining to bonded labour in Islamabad on Thursday. The court summoned directed the Islamabad Capital Territory Administration (ICTA) Deputy Commissioner (DC) Hamza Shafqaat to resolve the matter and submit a report on it. A member of the commission probing into bonded labour in the capital, advocate Umar Aijaz Gillani, told the court there are only four staffers in the labour department for the two million population of Islamabad. He asked how action would be taken if a labourer files a complaint. Gillani said that the department cannot conduct an action on a priority basis due to the shortage of staff. Read Pandemic pains: the plight of Pakistan’s labourers He maintained that the recommendations of the commission cannot be implemented with the dearth of staff. At this, the state counsel Danyal Aziz informed the court that there was no case of bonded labour in Islamabad. Osama Satti case update The IHC granted bail to a police constable arrested in the Osama Satti murder case. IHC Judge Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri ordered the release of Mudassir Mukhtar on bail against surety bonds worth Rs200,000. Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2021.

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Gender-responsive climate action urged

Minister of State for Climate Change Zartaj Gul has said that a gap between climate change policies and gender issues still exists that needs to be addressed appropriately. She was speaking at the launch of a study titled “Climate-induced migration among women: stories from Muzaffargarh and Tharparkar districts, Pakistan” held under the auspices of Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) on Thursday. “We need to acknowledge that the troubles that women face during the climate action are different from those that are faced by men so the level of struggle to cope with climate issues between genders is different,” the minister said. Commenting on the findings of the study, she said that women empowerment was impossible without equipping them with education and financial independence, therefore, there is an urgent need to include women in the workforce in addition to providing them access to school and agricultural training. “Climate-induced migration with a gender lens must be included in Pakistan’s climate change policy,” she said, adding that the climate ministry was working to achieve this objective. She added that the implementation of laws to protect women from gender-based violence should be ensured while working with law enforcement agencies at the provincial and district level. Climate Action Network in South Asia (CANSA) Director Sanjay Vashist emphasised that we must look at this climate-induced migration from a regional and international perspective. He stated that climate change will severely impact agriculture, water resources, ecosystems, food security, health and energy production in the South Asian region whereas women and children are particularly vulnerable before this phenomenon. Read Gender Protection Unit established SDPI Executive Director Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri highlighted that the study of climate-induced migration through gender lens was paramount in the policy structures. He said that women-led households should be reached out on a priority basis in climate hit areas. Besides, we need to expand the scope of studies on the issue from national to regional to international levels, he added. Raus Marija, a representative from International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) maintained that we need to focus on migration and the long-term effects of climate change as well as devising possible strategies and tools on climate migration. She said that Pakistan was one of the most vulnerable and disaster-prone regions to climate change, thus, making data collection on climate migration should be a priority in the future. ICMPD Pakistan office Head Raana Rahim said that since the study has showcased how the negative impact of climate change disproportionately affects the poor and less-educated segments of society, particularly women, the response must also be gender-responsive by taking these needs into consideration. Earlier, Danish Hasan Ansari, a visiting researcher at SDPI, presented his research findings. He highlighted that economic empowerment is necessary to boost women’s decision-making power. He said that we need to launch awareness campaigns on climate change impact for communities at the grassroots level and focus on the health and hygiene needs of women and girls, especially during such crises. SDPI Project Assistant Khansa Naeem and environmentalist Maryam Shabbir also shared various aspects of the issue, including a high risk of sexual violence for women who were internally displaced due to climate change. The study further comprised stories from local women on their experiences with climate migration, the challenges they faced, its impact on their health and well-being, financial constraints and lack of access to clean drinking water and food and impact on children’s education due to migration, especially for girls. Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2021.

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Plague of rats unleashed on Rawalpindi

The increasing number of rats in Rawalpindi has become a pestering affair for the common man and businessmen alike. In the last six months, several women and children had to visit hospitals to get vaccination after they were bitten by the rodents Traders from different areas of the city said that as their shops remained closed during the coronavirus lockdown, mice had a field day, destroying edible and non-edible items worth millions of rupees. The residents of densely populated areas such as Bani, Waris Khan, Dhok Khabba, Arya Mohalla, Madanpura, Shaheenpura, Raja Bazaar, Bara Market, Ganjmandi, Namak Mandi, Urdu Bazaar, Bhabra Bazaar, Bohar Bazaar and Moti Bazaar maintained that the well-fed rats were so big that even cats were scared of them. They said that no house, shop or market had been spared by the cat-sized rats. The citizens complained that the district administration was showing no willingness to do away with the rodents. Read Lahore café sealed after 'dead rat' shawarma video goes viral Businessman Yasir Butt said that the number of rats has surged to a dangerous level in Rawalpindi and no department was forthcoming to deal with the issue. Butt claimed that rodents incur a loss of millions of rupees to traders every year as they masticate clothes, footwear and other vast arrays of materials. Moti Bazaar Traders’ Union leader Tahir Taj Bhatti stated that rodents disturb their sleep at night and businesses in the day. He added that people use different pesticides to kill them, but their number was increasing. Bhatti said that the sewerage system of the inner-city areas was the actual den of the pests. He demanded that the city administration should launch a campaign to cull them. Meanwhile, health officials confirmed that the rat-biting cases were rising in the city and dozens of citizens have been vaccinated in hospitals after getting bitten by the rodents. The victims include children, adults, and women, they said. The Express Tribune learnt that the city administration has no specific department to deal with the nuisance. District officials have advised citizens to maintain cleanliness, which would automatically reduce the number of cases. Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2021.

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Govt won’t seek loan for Ravi Riverfront project

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) for Political Communication Dr Shahbaz Gill made it clear on Thursday that there was no plan of taking any loan for carrying out the landmark Ravi Riverfront Urban Development Project in Lahore. “You have heard of many projects in the past like Orange Line, Metro, Balloki, Bhikki and others, but all of them involved loans. In this entire project, there is no involvement of loan,” said the SAPM in a news conference. Briefing about the progress of project, the SAPM said a consortium of 13 reputable companies won the bidding for developing its ‘Sapphire bay’ being built under the first phase. The agreement with the consortium in that regard would be signed next week, he added. Read Locals prioritised for jobs in Ravi Riverfront project Dr Gill told that massive forestation, seven treatment plants and three barrages would be built under the first phase planned over 2,000 acres. Citing the example of Islamabad, he said the development of the federal capital was started on only 80,000 acres of land, adding this project would have 29 sectors and span over 102,000 acres with a major focus on mitigating environmental issues, water shortage and unplanned development in the area. It would have state-of-the-art educational institutions, healthcare facilities, innovation and technology centres, sports ground, he said while regretting the less focus of previous governments on such initiatives, which were being taken across the globe for development purposes. Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2021.

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Hundreds in Canada, US, believed dead in heatwave despite efforts to help

SALEM: Many of the dead were found alone, in homes without air-conditioning or fans. Some were elderly — one as old as 97. The body of an immigrant farm labourer was found in an Oregon nursery.

As forecasters warned of a record-breaking heatwave in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada last weekend, officials set up cooling centres, distributed water to the homeless and took other steps.

An excessive heat warning remained in effect for parts of the interior Northwest and western Canada Thursday.

The death toll in Oregon alone reached 79, the Oregon state medical examiner said Thursday, with most occurring in Multnomah County, which encompasses Portland.

In Canada, British Columbia’s chief coroner, Lisa Lapointe, said her office received reports of at least 486 “sudden and unexpected deaths” between Friday and Wednesday afternoon. Normally, she said about 165 people would die in the province over a five-day period.

She said it was too soon to say with certainty how many deaths were heat-related, but that it was likely the heat was behind most of them.

Washington state authorities have linked more than 20 deaths to the heat, but authorities said that number was likely to rise.

In Oregon’s Multnomah County, the average victim s age was 67 and the oldest was 97, according to county Health Officer Jennifer Vines.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Vines said she had been worried about fatalities amid the weather forecasts. Authorities tried to prepare as best they could, turning nine air-conditioned county libraries into cooling centers.

Between Friday and Monday, 7,600 people cooled off amid the stacks of books. Others went to three more cooling centers. Nearly 60 teams sought out homeless people, offering water and electrolytes.

“We scoured the county with outreach efforts, with calls to building managers of low-income housing to be checking on their residents,” Vines said.

But the efforts weren t enough, she said: “It’s been really sobering to see these initial (fatality) numbers come out.”

Oregon Office of Emergency Management Director Andrew Phelps agreed. “Learning of the tragic loss of life as a result of the recent heatwave is heartbreaking. As an emergency manager – and Oregonian – it is devastating that people were unable to access the help they needed during an emergency,” he said.

Among the dead was a farm labourer whose body was found Saturday by fellow workers at a nursery in rural St Paul, Oregon. The workers had been moving irrigation lines, said Aaron Corvin, spokesman for the state’s worker safety agency, Oregon Occupational Safety and Health, or Oregon OSHA.

Oregon OSHA is investigating labour contractor Andres Pablo Lucas and Ernst Nursery and Farms, which did not respond to a request for comment. Pablo Lucas said the man who died was from Guatemala, but he declined to comment further.

Weather experts say the number of heatwaves are only likely to rise in the Pacific northwest, a region normally known for cool, rainy weather, with a few hot, sunny days mixed in, and where many people don t have air conditioning.

“I think the community has to be realistic that we are going to be having this as a more usual occurrence and not a one-off, and that we need to be preparing as a community,” said Dr Steven Mitchell of Seattle s Harborview Medical Center, which treated an unprecedented number of severe heat-related cases.

“We need to be really augmenting our disaster response.”

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Pakistan reports 24 deaths, 1,277 COVID-19 cases

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has reported 24 more deaths over the last 24 hours by COVID-19 as the total number of fatalities has reached 22,345.

According to the latest figures issued by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), the number of positive cases has surged to 959,685 after the inclusion of 1,277 fresh infections during the said period.

The number of active cases in the country stands at 31,910.

The country conducted 46,941 tests in the past 24 hours out of which 1,277 Pakistanis were tested positive for the disease. The COVID positivity ratio was recorded at 2.27%

Overall 905,430 Pakistanis have recovered their health back from the COVID-19 pandemic, while 1,863 are still said to be critical.

As of July 2, as many as 13,234,851 people have been partially vaccinated against the deadly infection while 3,121,648 fully vaccinated, the NCOC said.

A total of 16,356,499 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered across Pakistan thus far.

Read more: New shipment of Covid vaccine to end troubles of overseas Pakistanis

Pakistan is likely to receive 2.5 million doses of Moderna’s mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine doses on Friday (today), said sources.

Pakistan will receive a shipment of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine through COVAX — the World Health Organisation’s global shared vaccine programme on Friday.

The new shipment would end the troubles of overseas Pakistanis for getting US-made COVID-19 jabs prior to travelling abroad.

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