Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo, President PPP Punjab, has demanded of the Punjab government to defer the Lahore Metro Train Project indefinitely and instead spend Rs 165 billion on building dams' network in Punjab to conserve rain waters so critical for the future of the agriculture in the province.
He wondered when this government would see sense in building Water Reservoirs in the province when Pakistan has been placed at no three the likely worst hit country by the findings of the international studies due to pitfalls of climate change, he added this in a statement issued from here on Tuesday.
He further said that the PPP would launch movement to mobilise public opinion in favour of dams and against Lahore Metro Train project if the government did not abandon the project that characteristically was the height of the flawed development strategy of the Punjab Government led by Shahbaz Sharif reflecting erroneous priorities mired by urban-rural discriminatory development planning.
He said that the PML (N) government had been in power in Punjab for about two decades but it could not pay attention to build Water Reservoirs in the Province reflecting the short-sightedness of its leadership that could not see the looming dangers of drought in the country that was not too far away. He recalled that floods seemingly had become the regular feature of Pakistan due to erratic weather pattern causing hundreds of billions of losses of life, property and crops throughout the province each year but the government led by Shahbaz Sharif was, regretfully, obsessed with the flashy and showy projects those have disproportionate relevance with the welfare of the large section of the populace.
He maintained that Pakistan was blessed in abundance with precious water resource that should be used to boost agricultural production and cheap electricity generation making our industry highly competitive in the international market. But, our incompetence to harness this potential to put the country on the trajectory of accelerated growth of the economy is unforgiving, he observed. He argued that Pakistani would have been facing the worst type of starvation today if Tarbela Dam, inaugurated by Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and Mangla Dam had not been built in Pakistan.
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