Daily Times

LAHORE: Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif said on Tuesday that the government was successfully dealing with major development problems facing the country.

He was addressing the inaugural session of the two-day Punjab Human Development Forum-2018.

“We have to move further by accepting our faults and mistakes because positive results are achieved by moving further by learning from the mistakes. Unluckily, the past governments continued to sing the mantra of ‘all is good’ for the last 70 years and facts were ignored. It was claimed as if rivers of milk and honey are flowing here,” he said.

The chief minister said that dictator Musharraf had deceived the nation by laying the foundation of Basha Dam project as no work was ever done. “There was no design, nor any land was procured and even the approval was not accorded. Along with it, resources were also not allocated for the project. The past governments have tremendously damaged the confidence of the nation with their false claims. The incumbent government has made sincere efforts to rid the country of various problems and these efforts have proved fruitful. We have completed energy projects of 5,000 megawatts capacity from our own resources in a record period of time. Due to the completion of these projects, load-shedding has been overcome. We have not established these projects by getting loans from the World Bank or Asian Development Bank, but the projects have been set up with the hard earned money of the people of the country. The speed and transparency with which energy projects have been completed have no resemblance in our history. The world has never completed energy projects with such a speed, with which these have been completed by our government. Terrorism and fanaticism were our biggest problems. However, Pakistan Army, police and other law enforcement agencies have worked hard, rendered invaluable sacrifices. Due to the sacrifices, peace has been restored in the country. The time is not far when the country will be purged of the menace of terrorism and fanaticism. Another example of national commitment and collective efforts is nuclear programme of the country. We have not become a nuclear power for any aggressive designs, but for the purpose of national defence. This is the result of untiring efforts of the whole nation. If this commitment and passion is employed, then the challenges will be overcome and we will also get rid of the beggary. Pakistan will achieve an honorable place in the comity of nations. We will be transformed as an aid-giving country and will identify the destinations by ourselves,” he said.

The CM said that economic targets could not be achieved without first developing the human resources because high-quality human resources played a pivotal role in overall socio-economic development.

Published in Daily Times, February 14^th 2018.