Sherpao wants GAIE to be made part of CPEC

SWABI:  Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) chief Aftab Sherpao on Monday asked the federal government to link Gadoon Amazai Industrial Estate (GAIE) with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.

Talking to reporters, he recalled that when he was chief minister of the province in 1988, the Pakistan People’s Party government had extended 100 percent incentives to Gadoon Estate due to its locational disadvantage but later the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government withdrew the incentives.

To a question, he said decline in the only industrial zone of the Swabi district had already affected the local people who had given up poppy cultivation as the government pledged to provide them alternative source of livelihood in shape of Gadoon Estate.

Aftab Sherpao said that various Chinese provinces part of the CPEC would get benefits from this game-changer project. Like the other parts of the country, he said, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa should also benefit from the project.

“The demand by the KP government for implementation of original CPEC is genuine. We opposed change in first agreed route and if the demand of the KP and Baluchistan were not accommodated there would be protests against the Federal government,” he said.