KARACHI: Pasban Democratic Party (PDP) chairman Altaf Shakoor has said that job creation is the only way to stabilise economy of the country and the government should pay attention to this issue on priority basis.
He said Pakistan is a fortunate country with a huge youth population but at the same time it is also unfortunate that a vast majority of our youth are jobless. He said if the government manages to introduce policies aimed at creating employment including self employment opportunities for these young people our economy would surely stand on its own two feet.
He said Pakistan has a huge potential to absorb its immense available manpower in both industry and agriculture, and all it needs is to correct the direction of our policymakers.
Altaf Shakoor said Pakistan being an agricultural country is forced to import wheat, cotton, cooking oil, tea and other edibles.
He said despite having a long coastal belt we have failed to grow palm oil trees on commercial basis and besides having proper climate in hilly areas we have failed to establish tea gardens.
He said if we only make the country self sufficient in cooking oil and tea, billions of rupees of the national exchequer could be saved.
He said we are wasting precious water in flood irrigation methods that could be saved if we adopt drip irrigation methods.
He said the country is going to water deficiency but the government is still sitting idle.
He said it is time to introduce a water emergency to stop turning the country into a desert land in near future.
He said all available resources should be allocated to erect water reservoirs.
He said this is also necessary to cope with stoppage of river water flows to Pakistan by India which he termed water terrorism.
He said our industrial sector is left orphaned by successive governments. He said we are still importing products that could be easily made locally.
He said automobiles, agricultural equipment, construction machinery, cell phones, computers and solar energy gadgets could be easily made locally and their import should be banned or heavily taxes to encourage local production.
He said we should be a nation of manufacturers instead of being the nation of vendors of foreign made goods.
He said the Karachi is the mother of job creation for Pakistan, but the port city goes badly neglected at both provincial level and federal government level.
He said the civic infrastructure of the Karachi is in the shambles and its citizens are deprived of modern urban facilities which are creating frustration. He said public transport sector of Karachi is the worst in whole world.
He said no any other mega city of the world still goes with such a poor public transport system.
He said the federal government gave the Green Line RBT for Karachi but its critical second phase from Mazar-e-Quaid to Meriwether Tower is still in limbo.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022