Rs65m approved for repair of roads in Chitral

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cabinet on Tuesday approved Rs65 million for maintenance of Chitral-Ayun-Bumburet Road, Chitral-Garam Chashma-Dorah Road and Chitral-Booni-Mastuj-Shandur Road and bridges.

Besides, the cabinet in a meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, took several other decisions.

Talking to the media, Information Minister Shaukat Yousafzai said under the KP Special Police Officers (Regularization of Services) Act 2019, the officers of the special police recruited on contract or fixed pay on August 1, 2019 will immediately become permanent.

He said the extension of their contract was already approved from January 1, 2020 to June 30 this year. From July 1, 2020, he added a total of 9,618 special police officers will be made permanent and the move will cost Rs2.726 billion annually.

The minister said the provincial cabinet approved the establishment of seven child courts at the divisional level to expedite the hearing of cases of crimes related to children.

As a result, he said seven Additional District and Sessions Judges (BS-20) have to be appointed which will cost around Rs50 million annually.

“The purpose of this initiative is to reduce the number of crimes related to children and to punish the culprits after immediate hearing,” he added.