China eradicated poverty through proper planning: PM Imran Khan

Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan has lauded China for eradicated poverty through proper planning.

While launching Helpline 911 to provide all emergency relief services through a single platform, the PM appreciated the Chinese achievement.

“Following the same (identical) model, China also steered around 700 million people out of poverty within 35 years,” he added.

The PM believed, this was a major step forward to developing Pakistan on the pattern of an Islamic welfare state.

He stressed the country could not achieve progress sans inclusivity and without breaking the elite system. “Now, every citizen in any part of the country will get the state’s response (in case of any emergency). This is a major move forward towards our mission statement of making Pakistan an Islamic welfare state,” the PM stated in his speech.

He mentioned that the integrated Pakistan Emergency Helpline (PEHEL) – 911 will provide emergency services like fire brigade, police, health assistance, disaster recovery and motorway police.

“A needy person will have to dial just 911 and the call center will forward the call to the relevant government agency,” he explained.

The PM maintained that the government was striving to ease the people’s lives as in any welfare state, the citizens should have the confidence of receiving the state’s response in case of any threat to life and property.

He contended that besides being a major facility, the PEHEL helpline would also give the people a feeling that Pakistan was for all as earlier, there were two parallel discriminatory systems supporting the rich and the poor respectively.

The Prime Minister, who earlier launched the helpline by pushing a button, also lauded the Interior Ministry and other collaborating departments for establishing the helpline, saying it would also require constant coordination among all the provinces.

“This project should have all the provinces on the same page because it is about the benefit of all,” he noted.

The PM underlined that the PEHEL helpline would also enable the government to maintain the crimes data, besides assessing the requirement of resources in different sectors.

Reiterating his vision of making Pakistan a welfare state, he claimed that his government had launched the Sehat (health) Insaf (justice) Card providing Pakistani Rs 1 million (10, 00000) health insurance to every family across the country, except the opposition-led Sindh province. He said being, a provincial subject, the people of Sindh could not get the facility of health insurance.

The PM reminded that the government introduced a core national single curriculum to do away with the discriminatory education system and also launched multiple welfare initiatives under the umbrella of the Ehsaas (care) and Kamyab Jawan (successful youth) Programme, including skill training, interest-free loans, housing loans, and farmers loans.

Moreover, he added, the introduction of a legal aid system to provide free legal services to the needy people was also on his government’s agenda.

Imran Khan emphasized that the Islamic welfare state took the responsibility of all of its citizens without considering the dearth of resources.