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Kalabagh Dam must for uplift, says Musharraf
Project to be launched at suitable time after consensus
 LAHORE-President General Pervez Musharraf has said that Kalabagh Dam is essential for
the optimum use of the country’s vast available water
resources saying that the project would be launched at
suitable time after consensus.
He said that we have to build as much dams as possible,
keeping in view the water shortage in coming years. Since
Kalabagh Dam has become a highly contentious issue, the
government has changed its priorities in the larger national
interest.
President Musharraf observed that the importance of Kalabagh
Dam cannot be denied but it had also become a contentious
issue that need nation’s consensus so it can not be started.
He hoped that people would soon realise the importance of
Kalabagh Dam.
He was addressing at international seminar ‘Vision 2025’
organised by Wapda here on July 23. He made it clear that
Kalabagh Dam project has not been shelved, sayting that we
need not only Kalabagh Dam, but also many more dams for the
optimum use of our vast available water resources and for the
uplift of national economy.
President Musharraf said the country would need fresh
water-management projects in future to keep pace with the
silting effect, which was minimising the storage capacity of
major reservoirs.
Musharraf said the Vision 2025 would focus on water
requirements for the next 25 years. He said existing water
reservoirs had already lost more than four million acre feet
of their capacity due to sedimentation. To meet the loss and
the future demand Pakistan would need more than one dam.
He hoped that in future as harmony developed among the people
of the country they would realise the importance of the
Kalabagh dam. As regards the Bhasha dam, the president said
that detailed studies had been started on the project which
would take three to four years to complete and the
construction work could start from 2005 to 2007.
He said that cheap thermal power could be produced by using
coal instead of costly gas. He said that Pakistan had one of
the world's biggest coal reserves at Thar with a huge capacity
of 175 billion tons. Unfortunately, no attention had been
given in the past to tap this important source of energy. He
said that Chinese technicians had been engaged to undertake
preliminary work on Thar coal exploitation. He said that a
3,000 MW power station could be set up on Thar coal.
Pakistan is blessed with over 40,000 MW of hydro-electric
potential, out of which only 12 per cent has been realised
todate. Unfortunately, the past governments focused on thermal
generation that had added oil bill by one billion US dollars ,
which reversed an old good hydro thermal ratio to 70 per cent
of thermal generation today which has increased the power
tariff. That has hit the domestic consumers and the cost of
production, the President said.
Agriculture is the most important among the four sectors that
the government has selected for leading the process of
economic growth through which poverty will be alleviated, he
said.
He said Pakistan was gifted with an immensely productive
agrarian base, but its harnessing on a sustainable basis has
always remained a distant dream. The vulnerabilities, to which
agriculture was exposed, were only brought to sharper focus in
the wake of recent drought.. July
24
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