Members of the Sindh Democratic Forum (SDF) are upset that the federal government has issued a notification to set up the Thar Coal Authority, with the Sindh Chief Minister nominated as the leader. The SDF said that coal is a provincial subject on which the federal government has no jurisdiction, thus the action is unlawful and void.
The SDF members regretted that officials of the Federal Ministry of Water and Power and WAPDA tried to control the resources of the province. They added that they were motivated to do so by "greed and narrow self interest". They added that Sindh has been especially been victimised by these groups.
The SDF said that this ministry in 1997 scuttled a 4 billion dollar investment plan by Hong Kong based investor Gordon Wu. The investor planned to develop Thar Coal to produce 5000MW of electricity by the year 2000. They added that had this action not been taken by the Sharif government, Pakistan would not face load shedding today and would not have an oil import bill of US $9 billion.
They added that the first Benazir government needlessly gave away the Super Highway, which they saw as Sindh Government property, to the National Highway Authority. The members added that the Toll from the Super Highway was being used by the NHA to pay for the loss making Lahore Islamabad motorway. The forum felt that another PPP Government was making a similar mistake now. The Coal of Sindh, be it Thar, Dadu, Thatta or Badin is a tremendous wealth of the Sindhi people, the SDF said and under no circumstances should it be handed over to the federal government, as they claimed the Ministry of Water and Power and WAPDA are enemies of Sindh.
The SDF suggested that the Sindh Coal Authority be expanded to become the Sindh Coal and Energy Authority, tasked with exploit the coal resources of Sindh and generating electricity.