LAHORE, May 27: Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the former Punjab chief minister, on Tuesday criticised the government’s announcement of “abandoning the Kalabagh Dam Project without having any public mandate.”

Talking to journalists here on Tuesday, he described the initiative as totally against the national interest as “it wipes off all the previous government’s efforts to develop countrywide consensus on the most controversial dam.”

The former chief minister alleged that instead of uniting, the mega project of national importance was being used to divide the federating units. The government, he said, had made this announcement just to divert the masses’ attention from their basic problems of price- hike, unemployment and deteriorating law and order situation in the country.

“On the pretext of disagreement by some politicians of small provinces, the champions of democracy have abandoned the vital national project in one go without tabling it on the floor of the National Assembly for debate.

“Millions of acres of barren lands in the NWFP and Sindh would not be irrigated and the country would also be deprived of generating 4,500MW low-cost electricity,” he said.—APP