Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said on Saturday that Pakistan needs political continuity to become a stronger and respectable nation among the comity of nations.
He was talking to a group of influential men from his native area of Gujar Khan who called on him at the Prime Minister’s House.
Raja, who recently succeeded Yousaf Raza Gilani in the fifth year of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government, said the vast natural resources of the country could not be exploited due to “political uncertainty” and “disruption of political process”. He said economic development and prosperity were intertwined with political stability.
Raja, who served as power minister in Gilani’s cabinet, told the visitors that it would be his “utmost endeavour” to end unscheduled load shedding. The power crisis, regarded as the worst in Pakistan’s history, has sparked violent protests across the country and drawn scathing criticism from all quarters. However, the former power minister, who had previously promised to end load shedding by 2009, insisted that the democratic government had initiated long term projects to resolve the energy problem on permanent basis. He told the visitors that power generation had increased in the country, and would further improve in the near future.
The prime minister also expressed the irony that despite the availability of huge copper and gold reserves in Balochistan, world’s third largest coal deposits in Thar, a hydropower generation potential of over 40,000 megawatts in Gilgit-Baltistan alone, and the fertile lands of Punjab, the people of Pakistan were plagued with energy crisis and caught in a vicious cycle of poverty.
While speaking on addressing the demands of the Pakistani expatriate community, Raja said that he had already instructed the Interior Ministry to provide the facility of machine-readable passports to overseas Pakistanis at the earliest.
The prime minister further said that he agreed with the public demand for the construction of small dams in Potohar region to overcome water scarcity.
The notables wished the new prime minister success and expressed their confidence in his ability to overcome the challenges facing the country. They said that Gujar Khan had produced prominent personalities like the chief justice of Pakistan, the army chief, two Nishan-e-Haider holders, four-star generals, and now a prime minister for the first time in the country’s history.
Political continuity needed to earn more respect for Pakistan: PM
