Speakers at the 2nd international conference on sustainable utilisation of natural resources have urged the need for adopting modern techniques of mineral extraction in order to save the non-renewable capital from getting wasted. They said that the poor extracting techniques in mineral exploration has not only depleted them but has led to serious health hazards for manpower working there.
They opined that people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA were the major victims of serious diseases like Cancer and Asthma because of the same. The International moot was jointly organized by the National Centre of Excellence in Geology (NCEG) University of Peshawar, in collaboration with University of Swabi on Monday. The international conference brought together more than 100 scientists, engineers and planners from Pakistan as well as abroad who highlighted the different ongoing developmental programs in their countries.
The theme of the one day Conference was to discuss the ways and means to tap the Oil and Minerals Resources, Dimension Stone and Infrastructure, Sustainable Agriculture and effective strategies for climate change adaptation.
The participants in their papers shared that Pakistan has as many as 300 billion tons of minerals reserves. However due to poor extracting techniques more than 80% of it gets wasted which is alarming. They added that Pakistan has the sixth largest mineral resources in the world and shall be forerunner in exporting minerals as finished good and not in raw form so that economy of the country could be strengthen.