09 January 2005	Sunday	27 Ziqa'ad 1425

HYDERABAD, Jan 8: Sindh Minister for Mines and Mineral Development Irfanullah Khan Marwat has said that the Chinese prime minister will perform the ground-breaking ceremony of the Thar coal power project by the end of Feb 2005.

He was speaking at the certificate award ceremony of the four-day mine rescue and first aid training course sponsored by the Pakistan Mine Owners Association, Sindh Zone, and the Mining Engineering department of the Mehran University of Engineering Technology in Jamshoro on Saturday.

Expressing government's commitment to utilize natural resources in order to usher development and prosperity in Sindh, he said he had signed the memorandum of understanding with the Chinese company that the Chinese prime minister would perform the ground-breaking ceremony of the Thar coal power project by the end of February this year.

He said he had signed the MoU on three conditions, which included priority to people of Tharparkar in employment then to the rest of Sindh.

He said the government had launched mobilization campaign to train Sindhis for coal projects in Tharparkar.

He said the project would be commissioned by the Chinese company from its own resources and the government would only purchase electricity from without investing a single penny.

He said Sindh had big reserves of coal deposits which were sufficient to meet the energy demand for decades but unfortunately we had not yet been able to tap this energy.

He said 14 international reputed companies from all over the world were interested to invest in power coal projects not only in Tharparkar but also in Mirpurkhas, Tando Mohammad Khan and Tando Allahyar.

He called upon the mine researchers of the MUET to conduct a study aimed at reducing the sulphur from coal of Thar because due to having large quantity of sulphur in the coal the cement industry has to import 1.7 million tones of coal from abroad.

He said Sindh was also rich in other industrial minerals as about one billion tones reserves of granite had been found in Tharparkar.

He said Italy and the UAE would invest billions of rupees in utilizing granite mineral in a proper way.

MUET vice-chancellor Dr Qadeer Rajput said according to the experts, the Thar coalfield was one of the biggest coal fields of the world with 175 billion tons of lignite reserves.

He said coal was a cheap source of energy, therefore, it was widely used for power generation throughout the world.

He said Pakistan spent $600 million annually on fuel import to support its current inventory of oil-fired electricity generation.

He said that without doubt coal resources could support country's electricity needs.