"The Punjab government should abandon the metro train project and spend Rs 165 billion on building dams in the province instead, to conserve water for bringing barren land under cultivation and also to save people from the flood devastations that have become normal than exception following erratic weather," Pakistan Peoples' Party President Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo said on Friday.
He claimed that farmers were subjected to the worst type of a vicious circle of economic problems as they had been suffering losses for the four past consecutive crops of wheat, sugarcane, maze, cotton and rice due to the anti-farmers policies of the government. "The government is least pushed to rectify the situation," he added. He regretted that a sizeable chunk of population of the province had no access to clean drinking water and hepatitis had assumed the epidemic proportion but government's lacklustre approach was unforgiving. "The government should prioritise such projects of providing sweet water instead of going after the whimsical projects those have no co-relationship with the public-health," he argued.
He pointed out that the highest number of school going children, who never attended school unfortunately, was in the province of Punjab. The government should implement the Compulsory Education Act of 1994 to address the problem of illiteracy on the permanent basis in the province, he urged.
He lamented the Punjab government for ignoring the education, health and other civic amenities in the urban and rural areas, because hospitals were hopelessly ill-equipped and poorly-staffed and availability of medicines was a distant cry. "Public schools are in pathetic conditions casting aspersions on the level of commitment of the government to impart education to the people," he said. He also said farm-to-market had disappeared altogether and the inter-city roads were no better by any measure because it was not less than a torture to travel on those roads. He deplored that the government was executing mega projects on purpose for the promotion of its vested interests.
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