As reported in the dailies, LCCI president has correctly diagnosed the ills that beset the economy i.e. dwindling exports, reducing foreign exchange reserves, high cost of doing business, low tax-to-GDA ratio, stagnant growth of manufacturing sector, deteriorating state of affairs of the public sector entities (PSEs) and highest trade deficit etc.
Sector-specific bodies have been tasked to submit their reports at the earliest. Is it too much to hope that the body tasked with looking into the reasons for water-scarcity will try to discover why we are going ahead with Bhasha dam which will take at least twice as many years to build as Kalabagh dam.
Are we not playing with the future of the country and its 20 crore people because of totally unfounded apprehensions that the dam will rob Sindh of its share of Indus water, when, in fact, Sindh is getting 70% of the water stored in Tarbela dam while north Punjab is getting none?
North Punjab will continue to get none from any and all dams on the Indus if Kalabagh dam is not built. Two thirds of north Punjab will revert from irrigated to ‘barani’, with a 50% loss in national food production.
ENGR KHURSHID ANWER
Lahore
