HARIPUR Jan 4: An uplift project worth Rs40 million has been approved for the Khalabat, a township for people displaced by the Tarbela Dam project, according to Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan.

He was talking to newsmen at his office here on Thursday. He was accompanied by former foreign minister Goher Ayub Khan.

He said that the government was also considering setting up a 10-bed cardiac care unit in Haripur.

Omar Ayub said that the provincial government’s lack of interest towards development in Haripur had delayed the completion of the 210-bed district headquarters hospital, adding that the lives of people needing immediate cardiac help were being put at risk because they had to be taken outside Haripur district. He said that a summary for the approval of a 10-bed cardiac care unit in Haripur had been put up to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

He termed it ironical that while the province received a hefty Rs6 billion annually on account of net hydel profit on Tarbela Dam’s power generation, district Haripur, especially areas where people affected by the project lived, were being ignored.

He said that the funds were being spent entirely in Bannu and Dir districts.

He said that Telephone Industries of Pakistan was suffering losses because of its management’s ill-conceived policies that failed to keep pace with the changing market trends.

He said that while the privatisation of TIP could not be stopped but he assured that the government would give them a handsome incentive package on which their union had already agreed.

He told that the Higher Education Commission had already approved a Science and Technology University on the site of TIP, which he told, would start operating very soon.

Omar Ayub told that the natural gas project for 13 more villages of Haripur had been approved while work to link other villages of across the river Daur, with main transmission line would be started during the next fiscal year.