PESHAWAR: A private Canadian company has offered to establish plants in Peshawar and other big cities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under private-public partnership to produce electricity, fertilizer and other useful stuff from solid waste and garbage.

Faiza Butta, chief executive officer of OIKOS International, offered the assistance during a meeting with the Chief Minister Pervez Khattak here on Monday. The CM welcomed the offer and promised to provide all the required facilities in this regard.

`If OIKOS International sets up such processing plant then the provincial government besides ensuring supply of 1,200 tonnes of garbage and solid waste to the plant daily, will also provide guarantee for consumption of electricity and other items produced in the plants established by the company,` the CM assured Ms Butta.

Mr Khattak directed relevant officials to facilitate the company in this regard to expedite the process and to submit a report in this regard to him.

WELFARE BODY`S TENURE EXTENDED: The Chief Minister Pervez Khattak on Monday gave three years extension to a welfare body to speed up rehabilitation of beggars and drug addicts in the province.

He issued the order of extension to Tanzeem Lissaail-iWal Mahroom while presiding over a meeting at CM Secretariat here.

The meeting was attended by Dr Mehar Taj Roghani, advisor to CM on social welfare, Azmat Hanif Orkazai, secretary Ushr, Zakat & SW, Mohammad Ashfaq, principle secretary to CM, Capt (retd) Azaz-ur-Rehman, chairman of Tanzeem Lissaail-iWal Mahroom and Akbar Ali, the project director, according to a handout issued here.

The chief minister said that the organisation could play its role by opening rehabilitation centres and ensuring physical and physiological treatment of beggars and drug addicts as well as imparting them various skills to enable them earn livelihood and become useful citizens of society. `This will also help in discouraging beggary and drug addiction,` he said.

Mr Khattak said that his government wanted to not waste precious resources in the name of welfare without results, but to ensure real welfare of poor and the destitute.

He said education, health and social welfare departments needed to made strenuous efforts aimed at welfare of deserving people.

The chief minister constituted a committee tasked with ensuring utilisation of funds purely on welfare of poor people.