RECORDER REPORT

PESHAWAR: The Prime Minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, has said that during last five years Pakistan has made tremendous progress in all the sectors especially energy, oil, gas and LPG and the country has been producing surplus electricity.

He was addressing a public gathering after inaugurating Neshpa Oil & Gas and LPG project in Karak on Thursday. The Prime Minister said that the government soon after assuming power concentrated on oil & gas and other projects of energy sector and has initiated scores of energy projects to tackle the menace of power outages in the country.

He said when PML-N rose to power in 2013 the country suffered 16 to 18 hours load-shedding, projecting highly negative image and impact which hampered growth in both industrial and agricultural sectors.

He said that the government accepted the challenge of energy crisis and completed scores of medium and mega energy projects, successfully steering the country out of darkness.

He said, today, power load-shedding has become a story of the past and only taking place in high line losses areas. In this connection, the Prime Minister also referred to IMF report, which speaks of government's success story simply by overcoming energy crisis and significant increase in power production.

The Prime Minister said that LNG and power plants were smoothly running in the country and the foreign investment has multiplied owing to improvement in energy and gas situation in the country.

In the past, he said, the country had suffered losses of billions of rupees due to a few oil and gas projects which were left unfinished and kept pending for one reason or the other.

The Government will not import furnace oil for next three years, he said and added that if such measures would have been taken in the past, people would not have suffered frequent power outages and country would not have suffered energy crisis.

The PM said that the rampant culture of corruption in the installation of transformers and gas connections has been plugged and all the projects are now completed strictly on merit and on time.

Despite limited resources, the PM appreciated OGDCL and others were completing mega projects such as Neshpa Oil & Gas and LPG project that would save billions of rupees in revenue for the country besides producing hundreds of thousands of cubic feet inexpensive gas for people.

The local people of Karak and adjoining areas will get jobs and other economic benefits and will be provided gas facility at their doorsteps.

The Prime Minister announced the construction of Shakar Dara and Banda Daud Shah roads and directed OGDCL to establish a model school in the premises of Neshpa and LPG projects.