ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has urged the nation to remain united in a bid to foil nefarious designs of terrorists who are now targeting soft targets including mosques, churches and school in utter desperation.
His statement comes amid countrywide protests by members of the Christian community over Sunday’s militant attack on two churches in Lahore. The suicide blasts at Catholic Church and Christ Church in Lahore’s Youhanabad area left 15 persons dead and more than 70 injured.
While briefing the National Assembly Standing Committee on Interior in Islamabad on Monday, the minister deplored the terrorist attack on Churches in Lahore as an inhumane act, and said those who perpetrated the act do not belong to any religion.
“No religion of the world allows such acts,” Nisar said. However, he said that those who took the law into their hand in the wake of the incident also forwarded the agenda of terrorists who want to create wedge, division, discord and frustration in the society.
The interior minister said that the overall law and order situation has improved to a great deal as a result of government’s effective counter terrorism policy. He said that noose has been tightened around the terrorists to make country abode of peace.
In addition, he also briefed the committee about the performance of the ministry, and said that new policies about arms licenses, private security companies and bullet proof vehicles are on the cards.
The minister while talking about verification of SIMs, said that biometric verification of 100 million SIMs have been completed. He told that roaming of Afghan SIMs have been blocked which has helped the security forces to prevent terrorism.
Nisar told that seven million passports were issued during the last one and half years which helped earn Rs32 billion. He said that validity of passports has been increased to 10 years from five years in order to facilitate the people.
The interior minister further told that 72 regional offices of passports will be opened in the next one and half years on merit. He said that six machine readable passports offices are operational in different countries and their number will be increased to 56 this year to facilitate the overseas Pakistanis.
