Minister initiates crackdown to end Gas, electricity thefts

By Ali Imran

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Interior and Narctotics Control Mohsin Naqvi on Thursday making a major decision, tasked Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to initiate a crackdown across the country against power and gas thieves.
Chairing an important meeting at his office, the minister gave instructions to the Agency to take strict legal action against those involved in electricity and gas thefts. The FIA officials informed the minister that special teams were already constituted to crack down on electricity and gas thieves on the past instructions given in the last meeting. Upon receiving a detailed report on Greece boat accident submitted by the FIA officials, the minister directed that all the elements involved in this tragedy must be brought to justice.
He also directed strict action against all the elements involved in human trafficking to curb this evil from the society. The minister also directed to further tighten the cordon against those involved in the Hundi/Hawala business. The action against those involved in the Hundi/Hawala business has improved the value of the Pakistani rupee, the FIA Officials informed the minster.
The minister also reviewed the progress on pending promotions of FIA officials and directed to deal with pending promotion cases on urgent basis.
All pending promotion cases should be disposed off within the prescribed period of one month, he directed the Agency’s top leadership.
In the meeting, the progress on the orders issued on the occasion of the visit of the Interior Minister to the FIA headquarters last week was also reviewed. Interior Secretary Aftab Durrani, Additional DGs and Directors of all regions of FIA participated in the meeting.
Earlier, Country Director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Young Ye called on Minister for Finance & Revenue Muhammad Aurangzeb today to discuss ongoing collaborations and future initiatives aimed at fostering economic development in Pakistan.
Ye congratulated the minister on staff level agreement with the IMF and stated that the market has positively responded to the development. During the meeting, the minister expressed appreciation for the support provided by ADB over the years. He particularly highlighted ADB’s assistance through Policy Based Lending (PBL) to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic and floods.
Furthermore, the status of ongoing policy-based programs, including the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Program and the Climate and Disaster Resilience Enhancement Program (CDREP) were also discussed.