Addressing a charged public meeting here in the Punjab city yesterday, Prime Minister Imran Khan said the journey to develop Pakistan as a welfare state had finally begun.
After breaking ground of a brand new university, the prime minister recounted his government’s initiatives like health insurance card, shelter homes and housing loans before resolving to uplift all the areas neglected in the past.
Accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, Member of the National Assembly Shaukat Bhatti and other party leaders, Khan unveiled the plaque for the construction of the university which is being built at a cost of Rs6 billion.
He announced extending the health insurance facility to half the provincial population by the current year and whole by the next year.
The Sehat Insaf Card facility, Khan assured, would give a confidence to the low-income groups for having an insurance cover of Rs1 million for medical treatment of a family at public and private hospitals.
“This is happening for the first time in Pakistan’s 73-year history. Even the developed countries do not have such a facility as being provided to the people of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” the prime minister said.
Khan felt the initiative would also lead to the development of a network of private hospitals across the two provinces because people with the insurance facility would confidently visit private hospitals for medical treatment.
He said like the university, the government would also build a 400-bed District Headquarters Hospital (DHQ) to provide better treatment facilities to the people of Hafizabad, which is the country’s 31st largest city.
He said besides building shelter homes for the poor, the government had also launched the Naya Pakistan Housing Programme to push banks into providing easy loans to even low-income people to enable them to build their own homes.
Prime Minister Imran Khan waving to the crowd during a public meeting in Hafizabad, Punjab, yesterday. Right: A young supporter of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party listens to the speech.
