ISLAMABAD: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Amir Senator Sirajul Haq has announced unconditional support to the government in its efforts to bring about peace and development. Addressing the Senate Standing Committee for Industry, he said that the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was the biggest economic project of the country after the nuclear bomb but it would be beneficial only if the backward and neglected areas of the country were provided equal opportunities for development. Sirajul Haq termed the energy crisis the biggest problem confronting the country and called for building dams to generate power at low cost. He said the ruling party had, in its election manifesto, made tall promises for solving the energy crisis but the government had not given special importance to the issue. It had ignored major and national energy projects and picked small and regional ones which had given rise to sense of deprivation in the small provinces, he said. “We don’t oppose energy projects run on coal or oil but the electricity produced through these would be much costlier and the people would find it hard to pay the bill” Siraj said. He said that the electricity produced from coal would cost Rs9 to 12 per unit and the electricity from oil would cost between Rs15 to 25 per unit and it would be hard for the common man to pay the electricity bill. On the other hand, the hydro electricity would cost only Rs2 to 3 per unit. The JI chief, therefore, urged the government to give priority to small dams. He said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) had the potential to generate thousands of megawatt electricity but the government was not paying due attention to it which was harmful not only for the province but the entire country. He said that the federal government should begin work on small dams in KP after clearing the arrears of the province. Sirajul Haq said that agriculture and industry were the two major fields of national production and both were dependent on energy. As long as the energy crisis persisted, industry and agriculture could not progress and the goal of prosperity would not be achieved. He said that agriculture and industry both were the mainstay of around 80 percent of the country’s population therefore, the government should take special measures to overcome the energy crisis during its left over period.
