Britain increasing Pakistan anti-terror spending: Brown

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown leaves 10 Downing Street, in central London, as he prepares to attend the weekly Minister's Question time in the House of Commons. -AFP Photo

LONDON: Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted Thursday that Britain's spending on counter-terrorism measures in Pakistan was increasing despite the fall in the value of the pound.
“Counter-terrorism expenditure in Pakistan and generally is increasing this year and will increase next year,” Brown said.
He added: “It is important to recognise our counter-terrorism effort is also linking up the efforts of our police forces here and our border control system, which is keeping the country as safe as possible.”
Brown was speaking the day after Foreign Office minister Glenys Kinnock said programmes to tackle terror attacks and radicalisation in Pakistan had been cut because of the weak value of the British currency.
But on Thursday, Kinnock moved to clarify her remarks, saying the overall Foreign Office budget had been hit by the falling value of the pound, but counter-terrorism spending was increasing.
The Foreign Office's budget for counter-terrorism in Pakistan will rise from 8.2 million pounds (9.4 million euros, 13.3 million dollars) in 2009-2010 to 9.5 million pounds in 2010-11, she told the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament.
British officials say a number of terror plots aimed at Britain have been planned in and launched from Pakistan.
Kinnock said Pakistan was “by far” the largest recipient of counter-terrorism spending, receiving more than a quarter of the budget.
A “small number” of counter-terrorism projects had been cut or scaled back, but the projects affected had not been “delivering as effectively as our other projects”, she said. -AFP

Pakistan _ National Assembly passes bill on sexual harassment

The National Assembly has passed the bill on sexual harassment at the workplace. –APP (file photo)

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Thursday passed the bill providing protection to women against sexual harassment at the workplace.
All the MNAs present in the house supported the bill, but JUI’s Maulvi Ismatullah opposed the bill, terming it un-islamic and staged a walkout from the National Assembly against the bill.
Religious parties in the Senate have already rejected the bill, calling it un-Islamic and unconstitutional.
The bill provides for a three-year imprisonment and Rs 500,000 fine to anyone proven guilty of harassing a woman and also calls for formulating a three-member inquiry committee in the private and public sector. –DawnNews

Pakistan _ Boulton Market loss estimate curtailed to Rs3.8bn

Some ‘clever’ shopkeepers, in an effort to get the maximum from the govt, had exaggerated losses in the forms besides, projecting the total loss of over Rs30bn after violence, said sources. - File photo

KARACHI: The process of revision of losses suffered by the traders in Dec 28 violence coupled with duplication of claims have resulted in curtailing the losses figures to Rs3.7-3.8 billion from the earlier estimates of Rs8 to Rs10 billion.

Till Jan 15, 2010, over Rs8 billion worth of claims had been submitted by the affectees of the Boulton Market at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI). That amount has been calculated on the basis of 2,145 survey (claim) forms received by the KCCI.

By Jan 20, which was the last date of filing claims, the KCCI had received 2,760 forms, of which 165 were duplicate.

Spokesman of the Karachi Affected Markets Relief Committee, A. Q. Khalil told Dawn the assessment of losses in rupee terms as per claims was still going on and it would take one or two days more to get the final figure.

“I think the amount of Rs3.7-3.8 billion as per claims received so far may further go down as the process of detecting of duplication in the forms is still going on,” he said, adding that he had anticipated stock losses of Rs10 billion but traders after given a solemn oath revised their loss amount.

“Around 40-45 per cent of the traders have revised the amount of losses compared to huge losses shown in the forms,” the committee’s spokesman said.

Sources said that some ‘clever’ shopkeepers, in an effort to get the maximum from the government, had exaggerated losses in the forms besides, projecting the total loss of over 30 billion after violence. After knowing that the amount arriving from the government would not exceed more than Rs4.5 billion, they decided to show real losses by revising the amount by more than 50 per cent from the previous figures.

Giving provisional figures, A.Q. Khalil said that 244 forms had been received under category of Rs100,000 or less, 720 forms under Rs500,000 or less, 564 forms of Rs1 million or less, 333 forms under category of Rs1.5 million or less and 641 forms of less than Rs5 million loss and 93 forms of more than Rs5 million. These are not final figures as counting of forms and assessment of losses is still going on,” he added.

The committee will meet on Jan 22, to get a final figure of stocks and merchandise losses and the process of giving cheques to the affectees would get underway from the last week of this month.

He said that the Karachi Affected Market Relief Fund has so far received Rs1.5 billion (Rs1 billion from the federal government and Rs500 million from the Sindh government).

Sources said that a city government representative in a meeting on Jan 8 had assured the KCCI for giving the claim forms, which it had received from the traders, to the chamber but so far no forms had been received.

Chairman Banking/Insurance committee of the KCCI, Ateeq-ur-Rahman urged the banks to extend soft loans free from collateral and interest to the Dec 28 victims at their earliest and without any further delay. He said he held meetings with the finance minister, State Bank’s higher ups and chairman Pakistan Banking Association.