BADIN, July 27: The Sindh minister for local government, Arbab Ghulam Raheem, has said that 5,000 direct and 10,000 indirect jobs will be available to the youths of Tharparkar and Badin districts after implementation of the coal/power projects in Thar area.

Talking to a delegation of journalists from Badin at his Karachi office the other day, he assured that the non-technical and technical jobs would be provided to the local people in the coal project.

The minister said that coal was discovered in Thar area in 1954 but the work for its exploration could not be taken in hand because of huge finance required to create necessary infrastructure.

However, after ground-breaking ceremony of the integrated coal-mining and power project at Islamkot, the work on first phase of the project had begun, he said. He added that the phase envisaged creation of infrastructure and extraction of 5 million tons of coal annually with setting up of a power plant of 1320MW capacity and development of mines.

Arbab said that the government of President Gen Pervez Musharraf had initiated the project to generate power from Thar coal.

He said that a 150-strong team of Chinese experts and technicians arrived in Mithi on Thursday for this purposes.

The minister said that the latest survey by Pakistani experts put the figures of proven reserves over 641 million tons, which were almost double than the previous estimate.

He concluded that difficult days for Tharis were over as the people of the backward and neglected area would not now remain deprived of basic necessities of life.