Coal plants

Our politicians have short memories, but they think that everyone else has short memories as well. Take the case of Opposition Leader Khursheed Shah who is these days pontificating on the media that the PML-N government is putting up coal plants all over Punjab to claim it has ended loadshedding to hoodwink people. His memory is not only short, but also very convenient. He forgets that it was late Benazir Bhutto,who put the country on the thermal path by inducting carbon-emitting IPPs and rejecting the hydel option. Khursheed also forgets that it is politicians like him who are stopping the PML-N government from going for the Kalabagh Dam, leaving it no choice but to go for coal plants.

On the one hand, Pakistan is expediting the melting of glaciers, while on the other it is not being allowed to build the only dam that can contain monsoon floods and save millions of acres feet of irrigation water from escaping to the sea.

Engr Khurshid Anwer

Lahore