details, the global head of DFID said that, although at present, his organization which is also known among many circles as ‘UK aid from the British people’ is working in full swing in two provinces of Pakistan namely Punjab and KPK as well as in the federal area, they were also contemplating expanding their humanitarian and capacity-building services to other provinces inside Pakistan in the near future.

When asked to draw a comparison between the performance of Punjab and KPK governments in the perspective of ‘cooperation with and response to DFID contributions’, Matthew Rycroft said he could only say that some kind of healthy competition between the provinces was a good thing.

The underlying principle, according to him, was strengthening and modernizing the institutions and systems in a self-sustaining wayfully committed to ameliorating the lot of the poverty-stricken people in different regions of the world including Pakistan, effective contributions were being made on a constant footing, for quite some time, by DFID (UK’s Department for International Development) in helping the federal and provincial governments in their empowerment, diversified capacity-building, and improvement and enhancement of institutional functioning.

These views were expressed by the global head of DFID and UK’s Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft CBE during an exclusive interview with The News, here on Friday.

The interview was held in a girls’ school run by the Punjab government in the provincial metropolis’ Township area where DFID has built 13 new classrooms with 11 toilets on the pattern of a modern, state-of-the-art architecture. The idea, according to UK’s Permanent Secretary, is to