SWABI: The local industrialists have demanded of the government to save the available infrastructure of Gadoon Amazai Industrial Estate and utilise the lone industrial zone of the district.

They told Dawn here on Tuesday that successive governments made pledges to revive Gadoon Industrial Estate but didn’t fulfil their promises. The series of making hollow pledges had been continued since May 1991 when the then government of Pakistan Muslim League withdrew 100 per cent incentives from the entrepreneurs, they added.

The incentives were awarded to Gadoon Industrial Estate by the government of Pakistan People’s Party to stop poppy cultivation and promote economic activities in the area.

The industrialists said that they attached great expectations with Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led provincial government to take some extraordinary steps for revival of the industrial zone.

Liaquat Ahmad Khan, the former president of both Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Gadoon Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that recently some new industrial units were opened at Gadoon. It was encouraging but the government should take steps for revival of Gadoon Industrial Estate, he added.

Mr Khan said that they exhausted their energy to convince both federal and provincial governments to save and strengthen Gadoon Industrial Estate. The industrial estate was a source of livelihood for thousands of former poppy growers, who stopped cultivating the crop after government assured them that they would be provided jobs at Gadoon Industrial Estate.

Fazal Amin, former president of GCCI, said that in past they were demanding incentives for industrialists but now they wanted to save the infrastructure of the industrial estate.

He said that the government with the assistance of the US had spent billions of rupees on the infrastructure of the industrial estate. It must be preserved by the government, he said, adding that they hoped that a day would come when the industrial estate would be revived.

Another industrialist said that it was pledged on a number of occasions that Gadoon Industrial Estate would get the status of export processing zone to generate employment opportunities but the promise was never fulfilled.

He said that in September 2009, the then American ambassador to Pakistan had paid a visit to Gadoon Industrial Estate to see prospects of establishing Reconstruction Opportunity Zone (ROZ) there. “I don’t know what happened later,” he said.

The owners of textile mills said that they were forgotten by the government. “The huge investment at Gadoon stops owners of textile mills to move to other industrial zones either in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or other provinces,” said the general manage of a textile mills.

Employees at different units said that Gadoon Industrial Estate was set up to provide jobs to poppy growers so that they could give up cultivation of the crop but the successive government failed to take steps for revival of the industrial estate where about 30,000 workers earned livelihood.