Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated various projects and announced the establishment of an IT university and a Metro Bus route for Faisalabad here on Saturday.
Addressing the workers’ convention at Iqbal Auditorium of the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, (UAF), he said that work on the projects would begin during the current year.
He said that Canal Express Way had already been completed and now a Metro Bus Project would be launched to provide quality transport facilities to the people of Faisalabad.
“The government of Punjab has provided a respectable mode of transport to the poor who can now travel to any part of the city by paying only Rs 20 in Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Multan”, he said.
The chief minister said that latest technology was the need of the hour and that the future of Pakistan was bound with IT. The latest technology is being used in land record management information system, police stations, hospitals, agriculture, education and other sectors in Punjab, Shehbaz Sharif said. He said that Faisalabad was one of Pakistan’s major an industrial centres and that the establishment of an IT university would prove to be a landmark in the history of the city, allowing hundreds of thousands of children from Faisalabad and its surroundings to receive education and enter the job market as skilled workers.
The CM added that the first phase of the 1000-bed Children’s Hospital had already been inaugurated in Faisalabad. “Orders to purchase machinery for the project have already been placed and the recruitment process for hospital staff has also been begun,” he said
He said that the project would be completed by September this year, adding that “the best available staff of international repute will be made available along with state-of-the-art medical facilities.”
Referring to the Rs 12 billion Safe City Project for Lahore, he said that the project would be replicated in Faisalabad and that its foundation stone would be laid during this year, adding that the project would be completed by next year.
Regarding farm-to-market roads, the CM said that these link roads would be completed through an investment of Rs 90 billion by June this year, revolutionising the rural economy.
He said that the prices of fertilisers had been decreased to facilitate farmers and that their losses had also been compensated, adding that the Kissan Package was resulting in an increase in per acre yield. The program providing interest-free loans worth Rs 100 billion to small farmers is also continuing successfully, the chief minister said.
He said that 7000-megawatts of electricity would be included to the national grid due to the completion of different electricity projects by the end of current year. These will end the country’s power crisis, he claimed, adding that hundreds of thousands will be able to find employment as a result.
Earlier, Mayor Razzak Malik and Zila Council Chairman Chaudhary Zahid Nazir also spoke on the occasion.
Federal and provincial ministers, MNAs and MPAs from Faisalabad, lawyers, industrialists, traders and people from different walks of life attended the convention.
