Last year President Asif Ali Zardari  reconstituted the Council of Common Interests (CCI) on the advice of Prime Minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani under Article 153 of the Constitution. The President named Prime Minister Gilani as Chairman of the CCI. All four chief minister and four federal member are part of CCI.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani is chairman and also federal representative for Punjab. Syed Naved Qamar is representing Sindh ,while Humyun Aziz Kurd is representing Baluchistan and Dr Arbab Alamghir is representing Khyber-Pakhtunkhuwa .

According to agreement between Federal and provincial representative council will meet at least once every three months and whose area of purview has been widened. lets hope it will be helpful in resolving issue between provinces and center.

source : Dawn

CCI approval

Pakistan’s power crisis is growing by the day and urgent steps are required to address the problem. In this connection it is heartening to learn that the Diamer-Bhasha dam project has finally been approved by the Council of Common Interests, possibly paving the way for assistance from foreign donors. But what is equally if not more important here is that the dam was given the green light through consensus with all stakeholders on board.

Such cooperation is of vital significance in a country where provinces have historically viewed other federating units with distrust and even hostility. It is also promising that efforts are under way to make the CCI a genuinely functional body that will meet at least once every three months and whose area of purview has been widened. We hope the administration will deliver on its pledge to hold regular CCI meetings so that pending projects and other inter-provincial issues can be expedited in similarly harmonious fashion.

While Sunday’s meeting of the CCI bodes well for future inter-provincial cooperation, it remains unclear if the royalties dispute between Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been fully resolved. Any further controversy over ownership of the dam could again jeopardise international assistance for the project, particularly from the Asian Development Bank which has taken a clear stance on the issue. Any doubts still lingering on this count must be removed.

That said, it should be remembered that building big dams or exploiting untapped coal reserves are long-term ventures while the country’s energy needs are immediate. Diamer-Bhasha, for instance, is not expected to be functional until 2019, and that too if all goes well. As such it is important that while the government pursues mega projects that meet with across-the-board approval, serious thought must also be given to power-generation options that can deliver in relatively quick time. In this regard special attention ought to be paid to run-of-the-river projects, wind farms and other forms of renewable energy such as tidal, biomass and solar power. Our potential in this area is huge and must not be wasted.

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