LAHORE, Oct 2: Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira has said the government is willing to withdraw the Frontier Constabulary (FC) from Balochistan provided PML-N President Nawaz Sharif takes responsibility for law and order.

Talking to reporters here on Tuesday, Kaira said: “Nawaz wants withdrawal of the FC from Balochistan. If he is ready to take the responsibility for law and order there, the government can withdraw the FC.” He said Nawaz talked about one thing one day and another the second day. “No body believes his words,” he said.

He said the government welcomed the return of Akhtar Mengal to Pakistan.

Earlier, speaking at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Khurshid Shah and Kaira assured the businessmen that their grievance regarding shortage of electricity and gas would be addressed.

Khurshid Shah said the government had planned to offer five-year term soft loans to the industry for setting up coal-fired turbines that could generate up to 4000MW of electricity. He said the oil mafia had been obstructing energy projects as power generation from local resources would cut the oil import bill that was $27 billion annually.

He said the PPP government was not responsible for energy crisis and urged the business community to ask the chief minister to form a commission to fix the responsibility and identify root causes.

He said the government was well aware of the problems of the business community caused by electricity and gas shortage but unable to do anything over a night.

LCCI President Farooq Iftikhar said the chamber intended to approach the federation to plead the case of Punjab. He said it was very unfortunate that the country had no clear direction and there was a dire need for implementation of business and investor friendly policies.