The Punjab Education Minister Rana Mashood Ahmad Khan on Wednesday emphasized the need for sustainable development while simultaneously caring for affectees of the development process in his key note address at the inaugural session of a two-day long National Conference on Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation in Pakistan under the World Bank’s auspices. “The present government realises its social responsibility in this regard,” he said, referring to the recently completed rehabilitation of the Lahore Metro Bus Corridor’s construction’s affectees. He also stressed upon the need to empower the research wings of various private and public sector universities because without viable research, no society could flourish. Also present on the occasion was Punjab University Vice Chancellor Dr. Mujahid Kamran, who recalled the massive displacement of people during Tarbela and Mangla Dams’ construction, when people lost their ancestral belongings although most of them were rehabilitated in Britain after government sponsored immigration. He claimed that money was not the solution to the rehabilitation problem, as every person possessed a sentimental link to his ancestral land. A scientific approach to the affected population’s resettlement was needed because there could be no sustainable development without failing to arrest poverty. Brazil was a specific example in this connection, he concluded.
