KARACHI: In the first-ever presentation of its kind in front of civil society, Chief Minister (CM) Syed Murad Ali Shah on Thursday highlighted the development initiatives undertaken by the Pakistan Peoples Party’s provincial government over the past 15 years through pictorial and video representations at the auditorium of the Sindh Assembly.

Among those attending the such an elaborated and comprehensive presentation were representatives from chambers of trade & commerce, media houses and their associations such as APNS and CPNE, religious leaders of different faiths, provincial ministers, chief secretary, provincial police chief and secretaries of various departments.

The CM stated that the total power generation based on Thar coal was 3,240 MW. He explained that Thar Coal Block-I, which was installed for $2 billion, had generated 1,320 MW and the Thar Coal Block-II generated 660 MW since July 2019. The Thar Energy Limited had been generating 330 MW since September 2022 while the Thalnova Power Thar Limited 330 MW since February 2023, and the Lucky Electric Power Company at Port Qasim had been generating 660 MW since March 2022, he added.

He said the provincial government had constructed 113 small recharge and delay action dams and the construction of 18 small dams was in progress in Nagarparkar and Kohistan. The CM said several roads and numerous schools damaged in floods had been reconstructed or rehabilitated while the focus was on reconstructing houses for 14 million individuals.

He said that the biggest achievement of the government’s partnership with the Child Life Foundation was that today every child in Sindh was within 30 minutes of world-class emergency care which was free of charge, adding that 29 chest pain units across the province, including 19 in Karachi, and 10 in rural areas of the province had been established.

The CM said Rs12 billion had been allocated for social protection while the provincial government had also initiated a project “The Strengthening Social Protection Delivery System in Sindh” with an allocation of Rs48 billion.

Similarly, he counted various schemes and projects to underline the provincial government’s efforts.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2024