Diamer-Bhasha affectees provided mobile health unit - The Express Tribune

Unit will serve as a facili­ty for people residi­ng in diffic­ult-to-reach areas. The mobile health unit, comprising a four wheel drive ambulance and all necessary medical instruments, was handed over by Wapda

LAHORE: The Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has provided a state-of-the-art mobile health unit to affectees of the Diamer-Bhasha Dam Project. The unit will serve as an expanded medical facility to people residing in difficult-to-reach areas adjacent to the project.

The mobile health unit, comprising a four wheel drive ambulance and all necessary medical instruments, was handed over by Wapda Chairman Shakil Durrani to project authorities here at Wapda House today.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chairman said the mobile health unit, in addition to existing health facilities in the area, will prove instrumental in the treatment of ailing individuals in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan and the Kohistan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Besides providing civic amenities to affectees of the project under a compensation package chalked out in accordance with standards laid down by international donors and financial institutions, Wapda will also upgrade District Headquarters Hospitals at Chilas, Gilgat and Skardu, he added. The chairman expressed satisfaction over the setting up of Wapda medical camps in the project area.

The Diamer-Bhasha Dam Project was formally initiated by the Prime Minister in October last year after the Council of Common Interest unanimously approved the project. For the $12 billion project, the land acquisition process is in progress; while 13 contracts for construction of Wapda offices, colonies, contractors’ camps, roads and infrastructure in the project area have already been awarded.

The Diamer-Bhasha Dam is a multi-purpose project which aims to store water for irrigation, mitigate flooding and generate low-cost environment-friendly hydel power. On completion, the project will store 8.1 million acre feet of water, besides generating 4500 megawatts of electricity. The project will add about 20 billion units of electricity annually to the national grid. Annual benefits of the project have been estimated at about $2.3 billion.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15th, 2012.

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FTC Should Tread Carefully With Mobile: NRF - Supermarket News

WASHINGTON — The National Retail Federation on Friday urged the Federal Trade Commission to move cautiously in establishing regulations for mobile payments, and said any rules that are adopted should parallel those for the underlying form of payment and not be specific to the technology.

“Mobile technology and processes are just beginning to emerge and we won’t know which practices the public will like or what methods will provide new benefits until the technology begins to coalesce,” NRF’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel Mallory Duncan said in a statement. “The government should not impose regulations that would forestall yet-to-be-imagined advances and innovation in order to avoid potential ‘harm’ based largely on speculation.

“Some of the best innovations on the Internet today might have been suspect a generation ago but today they are benefits few consumers would want to live without,” Duncan added. “The public very often embraces change as the ‘future’ becomes ‘now.’ Familiarity breeds content.”

In-Depth Report: Mobile Payment's Birth Pangs

Duncan noted that a phone itself is “just a device, not a payment” and that actual payment could take place via a credit or debit card, directly from a bank account, be processed through the user’s phone bill, or be made through other means. Any privacy rules developed for mobile payments should be no more restrictive than those for the underlying form of payment, he said.

Duncan said federal officials need to address a number of issues including a definition of what constitutes a mobile payment. While the term is largely used to mean a payment made in a bricks-and-mortar store using a smartphone, officials need to decide whether a payment made for an online purchase on the same device constitutes a mobile payment, or if payments made on a portable device like an iPad tablet or a laptop computer are “mobile.”

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