Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q) senior central leader and former Deputy Prime Minister, Ch Parvez Elahi, has said that the current political situation posed a threat to the N-League government, not to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.
While talking to a representative delegation of traders at his residence here on Sunday, Parvez Elahi said CPEC did not belong to N-League, it was a project being developed by the states of Pakistan and China, and a change in government could not possibly threaten it.
He said the Pakistani nation and its armed services were there to protect CPEC and would allow no harm to come to the project with the departure of the present government; in fact, he added, it would be completed with greater efficiency and transparency.
Ch Parvez Elahi said 75% of the investment provided by China for CPEC -$35bn out of a total of $46bn- was meant for power projects whereas the track record of the present government showed that its power projects had seen consistent failure during the last three years.
He said the Sharif brothers had been constantly piping on about CPEC, but the public knew that their concern has always been their commissions, and not the success of CPEC. It is these expectations of commissions and kickbacks which have been threatened by developments in the Pakistani political scenario, he said, and the opposition protest was a threat not to CPEC but to the corruption of the government.
Parvez Elahi said further that Nawaz Sharif had announced Gadani power project back in August 2013 at a cost of $9bn, claiming it would produce 6000 megawatt of electricity but this has been shut down; $12bn The cost of the Nandipur Power project had been increased from $12bn to $72bn by the present government, yet this project was shut down just a day after it had been inaugurated by the Prime Minister; Sahiwal Coal project with a pricetag of $1.8bn has been a flop from the start, since nobody knows where the coal it requires will come from and how it will get there; the Quaid-i-Azam Solar project drama has also flopped and now it was being given out on contract to avoid a blow to the government’s reputation; even the Neelum-Jhelum project, started during PML-Q’s tenure had lapsed and had not been completed by the present government.
