KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has said the funds needed to immediately start work on Thar power plant are available.

Mr Shah was presiding over a meeting about Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Thar to perform the groundbreaking ceremony of the Thar Coal Power Project on April 11.

“I am happy that the dream of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto is at the stage of realisation,” he said, adding that about $500 million and another $1.5 billion was available to start work on the project on a war footing.

The Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC), he said, would establish a 660MW coal-fired power plant at Thar coalfield and once the project was completed it would be expanded by installing another 660MW plant.

The Sindh government would complete the project by the end of 2018 with partnership of the SECMC in coal mining, he said.

Describing the project as a breakthrough in the history of the province, he said that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had invited a Hong Kong-based company to make a feasibility report of coal fields, begin coal-mining and generate power from Thar coal fields.

“Had that project been allowed to complete, we would have been exporting electricity to our neighbouring countries, but unfortunately the project was scrapped on political grounds,” Mr Shah said.

However, now the Sindh government would extend all possible support to the federal government to complete the project in the “supreme national interest”, he said.

Regarding security of Chinese engineers, the chief minister said the inspector general of Sindh had told him about the ongoing process of recruiting 2000 former servicemen. “We will ensure their security as per the commitment of the government,” he said.

The meeting was attended by Senior Minister for Finance and Energy Syed Murad Ali Shah, Chief Secretary Siddique Memon, Principal Secretary to C.M Alamuddin Bullo, Sindh IG A.D. Khwaja, Finance Secretary Sohail Rajput, Energy Secretary Agha Wasif, commissioner and DIG of Mirpurkhas, besides others.

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2016