National Assembly Standing Committee on Textiles has unanimously recommended approving the proposal of Pak-Korea Technical Textile Centre, the first state-of-the-art-textile centre of the country after considering its benefits. NA body has also recommended approving Rs54 million for textile centre on Friday.

From Pakistani funding, a building will be constructed while Korea will provide consultants who will not only train local scientists but will also carry out research activities. Korea will also equip the state-of-the-art centre.

According to officials of Ministry of Textiles, land adjacent to a university has already been marked for the centre. Korean team is present in Faisalabad to finalize the project, and a final announcement from Korean side for 600 million funding is expected soon.

After the approval from the committee, now the project will be forwarded to Planning Commission.

As the Planning Commission is already burdened with many other important projects, it might take some time to get approval for this unique and first ever project.

However, the officials revealed that Korea was already very active and has completed initial work.

The standing committee, which assembled to discuss and finalize the PSDP budgetary proposals for 2016-17, also approved Rs600 million for the construction of building of Faisalabad Garment City Training Center, in Faisalabad Garment City.

The meeting, under the chair of lawmaker Khawaja Ghulam Rasool Koreja, postponed the budgetary proposals for the project “Pink Bollworm Area Wide Integrated Management in Cotton Growing Regions” for further deliberations.

Pink bollworm and whitefly are known as the two major killers of cotton crop in Pakistan. This year, around 33 percent reduction in cotton crop was termed to low quality seeds and pink bollworm and whitefly attacks.

Members stressed the need for the promotion of seed production and recommended that the Agriculture University, Faisalabad may be taken on board.

The standing committee members also showed desire to establish state-of-the-art-technical textile centre in other provinces as well.