BHIKKI, Pakistan: Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday urged his political opponents not to indulge in the blame game, else they would end up in oblivion as the people would only remember Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for its service to them.
While addressing a gathering after inaugurating the operationalisation of the first phase of Bhikki power plant, adding 717 MW to the national grid, Nawaz Sharif said, “The newcomers in politics can only lie, do sit-ins, level baseless allegations and make tall claims.”
“Fear Allah, stop politics of allegations, else you too will go into oblivion and in the end only Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz will be in the fore,” Nawaz Sharif said.
He said despite their efforts they had failed to win the hearts of the people and mentioned the defeat of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) candidate in a by-election yesterday.
“We earlier won by 8,000 votes in 2013 general election, but yesterday we got over 22,000 votes, despite the fact that all other political forces backed the PTI candidate,” he said.
The Prime Minister was also critical of the previous Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government in its failure to address the serious issue of power outages and said those, who were responsible for the current load shedding, were today threatening to lodge protest.
“You must be ashamed of yourself. Had you considered Pakistan your own country and served the nation with honesty and dedication, we would not have faced such a bad situation,” the Prime Minister said.
He said Balochistan was abandoned by the previous governments and now several development projects were near fruition there. He regretted that the previous governments never bothered to undertake any development project in the province.
He said the federal government was pleased to undertake several development projects in Karachi and Sindh, despite the fact that it was provincial responsibility.
The Prime Minister said there was no such tendency in the country to complete such large projects in a short span of 18 months. Operationalization of Bhikki plant in 18 months was a new chapter in the country’s history of progress and prosperity, he added.
He said there had been a trend in the past to complete a project costing Rs 10 billion in Rs 100 billion and mentioned delays in completion of Lowari Tunnel, Nandipur, and Neelum Jhelum.
“Had Shahbaz Sharif not taken personal interest and not monitored the project, the cost would have escalated,” he said and referred to Haveli Bahadur and Baloki projects, where the savings were to the tune of Rs 154 billion.
“Had we moved at this pace in the past 70 years, Pakistan would have been an economic power today.”
