Govt withdraws NAB bill, five ordinances

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Friday passed the Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Bill, 2019, which envisages establishment of Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Agency (ZARRA) where child missing case will be reported and it will generate an automatic alert.

Except the Benami (Prohibition) (Amendment) bill, 2019 and National Accountability Bill, 2019 all the bills were passed by the House.

Under the ZARRA bill, the maximum sentence handed down to perpetrators of child sexual abuse will be life imprisonment with a fine of Rs1 million while the minimum sentence will be 10 years. The bill envisages death sentence or life imprisonment for threat, torture, elopement and abuse of children less than 18 years of age.

As per decision taken through consensus by the government and opposition on November 7, the House also passed bills including Letters of Administration and Succession Certificates Bill, the Legal Aid and Justice Authority Bill, Enforcement of Women’s Property Rights Bill, the Superior Courts (Court Dress and Mode of Address) Order (Repeal) Bill and ICT Rights of Persons with Disability Bill. The bill was presented in the National Assembly by Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari to mark the second death anniversary of seven-year-old Zainab Ameen Fatima, who was brutally raped and murdered in January 2018.

Dr Mazari thanked Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Asad Umar and Pakistan People’s Party MNA Mahreen Razaque Bhutto for expediting the bill's passage.

The bill will pave the way for the setting up of the Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Agency (ZARRA), where missing child cases will be reported.

The bill also proposed a maximum life imprisonment and action against those police officials who delay the investigation.

The powers and functions of ZARRA include the activation of alerts at the federal capital level whenever there is a report about a missing or abducted child. These alerts will include information on the physical characteristics of the missing or abducted child as well as any other data that will help in the child’s identification. The proposed authority will also coordinate with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) for issuance of Zainab Alert SMSes and MMSes, and with the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) to run tickers on television channels or any other available medium.

The bill also provides for setting up of a nationwide telephonic toll-free hotline number where any person may report a missing or abducted child.

It also calls for the maintenance of an online database both in the National Commission of the Rights of the Child (NCRC) and the division concerned of every reported incident of a missing or abducted child.

Meanwhile, responding to a calling attention notice in the House, Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari said a national action plan has been prepared against child abuse and molestation, which will be launched before the end of this month.

She said a registry of convicted sexual offenders is also being prepared with the cooperation of FIA.

Regarding the latest incident of child abuse in Manshera, the Minister for Human Rights said the provincial government has taken a strict notice of despicable incident.

The movers of the calling attention notice including Mehnaz Akbar Rafi, Dr Nafeesa Shah, Murtaza Javed Abbasi and others demanded strict action against those involved in heinous acts of child abuse.

As per agreement reached with the opposition on November 7, 2019, the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan with rule 274 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly, 2007 withdrew six ordinances including the Letters of Administration and Succession Certificates Bill, 2019, the Legal Aid and Justice Authority Bill, 2019, the Enforcement of Women’s Property Rights Bill, 2019, the Superior Courts (Court Dress and Mode of Address) Order (Repeal) Bill, 2019 and the Benami Transaction (Prohibition) (Amendment) Bill, 2019 and the National Accountability (Amendment) Bill, 2019.