Pakistan and Industrial Traders Associations Front (PIAF) Wednesday urged the government to utilize coal to generate electricity as the energy situation is worsening with every passing day thus pushing the economy to the wall. While talking to a group of businessmen, the PIAF Chairman Engineer Sohail Lashari said that the business community was unable to understand that why the government was not initiating coal based power projects when the country owns trillion dollar worth of coal reserves that are enough to produce one lakh megawatts of electricity for 100 years. The PIAF Chairman said that Pakistan is the most resourceful country in the community of developing states but the electricity is the severest in comparison to other nations. Engineer Sohail Lashri said that Africa, Poland, India and China were producing huge quantity of electricity by coal but Pakistan despite having huge resources is producing only 1 per cent electricity through coal means. “Neither any attention was paid to the construction of new water reservoirs nor other resources including solar nor wind were tapped that resulted in a painfully slow economic growth.” The PIAF Chairman said that it is high time that the Federal government should initiate work on coal based power plants to get rid off the electricity shortages that have rendered hundreds of thousands of industrial workers out of jobs besides closure of numerous industrial units. The electricity through would also help curtail oil import bill as at the moment a big chunk of electricity being consumed is being produced through thermal means and a huge amount of much needed foreign exchange is being spent on it.
