POLITICIANS not only have short memories, they think everyone else suffers from the same malady. Take the case of Mr Khurshid Shah who these days is pontificating on television that the PML-N government is putting up coal plants all over Punjab to claim it has ended loadshedding.

In this instance, Mr Shah’s recollection is not only short but also very convenient. He forgets that it was Benazir Bhutto who put the country on the thermal power path by inducting the carbon-emitting IPPs and rejecting the hydel option. He also forgets that it is politicians like him who have left the government on the prextet that they would accept no other choice but coal.

The result, on the one hand, Pakistan is expediting the melting of the glaciers and, on the other hand, it is not being allowed to build the only dam that can contain the monsoon floods and save millions of acre feet of irrigation water from going waste daily.

Engr Khurshid Anwer

Lahore

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2016