KARACHI: Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto yesterday [March 25] underlined the need of a highly developed and efficient international telecommunication network to “maintain close contact with the rest of the world”. He was inaugurating the Rs 90 million Canadian-aided Satellite Earth Station at Deh Mandro. … Among other things, the Prime Minister said, high-quality telecommunication service was also vital for economic and industrial growth. … Expressing satisfaction that the Station had brought Pakistan into the age of space communications, he also said ... it had completed more than one year of successful test operation.

[Meanwhile, as reported by a correspondent from Karachi,] the 18-mile long Karachi Circular Railway will be replaced by a modern underground railway system in Karachi and actual work on the project will start by July, 1975, an authoritative source said. … This programme has been given due approval by the Central Government and the Prime Minister … has given 7 to 8 years’ time to ‘complete the project’. For this purpose, the Ministry of Communications has invited experts from Japan who have already arrived... .

Published in Dawn, March 26th, 2024