While showing a grave concern over the Indian Supreme Court order to implement an ambitious project to interlink 30 rivers, Pakistan Industrial and Traders Association Front (PIAF) has appealed to the Supreme Court of Pakistan to order work on all dams including Kalabagh Dam on war footing. In a press statement issued here Tuesday, Chairman PIAF Sohail Lashari said that Indian government in connivance with the Indian Supreme Court is hatching conspiracies to turn Pakistan barren. The project interlinking the 30 rivers was made in 2002 while a task force was also formed in India for the purpose but unfortunately the government of Pakistan did not bother to prepare a counter strategy and played the role of silent spectator on the issue.
He said that Kalabagh dam is a project of national importance but present regime shelved the project with a one stroke of pen. He urged the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry to initiate suo moto proceedings and direct work on Kalabagh Dam. He said that Kalabagh Dam could generate cheap electricity but federal government shelved the project with one stroke of the pen and utilizing all energies to generate costly electricity through furnace oil. He said that electricity prices in Bangladesh and India are 9.5 cent and 9 cents respectively while in Pakistan electricity prices are 14 cent per unit.
Sohail Lashari said that manufacturing growth is stagnant and hardly around 2.3 per cent while burden of internal and external debets getting havior with every passing day. He said that industry can not grow by using much costly electricity. Pakistani products are already losing their share in the international market and situation would nose dive if Kalabagh Dam is not constructed on war footing.
