President Asif Ali Zardari performed the ground-breaking of the Cadet College (Dadu), the garment city (Karachi) and the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Chair and Convention Centre at the Sindh University (Jamshoro) at the Chief Minister’s House here on Friday and directed the government to complete these projects on time.
The president also chaired the balloting of Waseela-e-Haq programme to help 700 families.
According to a spokesperson, the president said that the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto chair at the Sindh University would provide an opportunity to the scholars to study the political philosophy of the first Muslim woman prime minister, which needed to be collected and collated before it was misplaced or damaged by the vagaries of time.
Seldom before had a victim been transformed into a legend so soon after departing from this world, the president said of Benazir Bhutto and complimented the University of Sindh for establishing the chair and the convention centre as a homage to her ideals and to her memory.
The spokesman said that the president had also called for exploring the possibility of setting up such research chairs in the universities of other Islamic countries.
The president said that the best form of paying homage to the memory of late Benazir Bhutto would come through empowering the women of Pakistan, adding that the Benazir Income Support Programme had been launched precisely for achieving that objective.
In addition, the government had decided to give state lands in the command areas of the new proposed dams to the poor women of the area free of cost, he said.
Moreover, a law for protecting women against harassment had also been enacted, he said.
Noting that girls from the rural areas were unable to join universities because of lack of hostel facilities, the president directed the provincial government to set up a Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Girls’ Hostel at the University of Sindh.
President Zardari recalled that Benazir Bhutto had always advocated investment in people by improving the quality of education and healthcare instead of building war machines. He said that the government would honour Benazir’s vision by investing more in the social sector.
He said that the public-private partnership model had been adopted for the economic and industrial development of the country and the garment cities in Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad were the result of this policy.
“The setting up of the Cadet College in Dadu shows our emphasis on quality education,” he said.
TRADE: Addressing some businessmen on the occasion, the president said that the war against militancy had cost Pakistan over 45 billion dollars over the last eight years.
“We have urged the international community to help us in our economic development through trade, not aid, for fighting the menace of militancy,” the president told the businessmen.
“We have impressed upon the West that market access will create employment opportunities in Pakistan and wean the frustrated, jobless youths off joining the extremists and the militants,” the president said.
The president said that in order to assist the textile industry, a limit had been set on exports of low valued yarn so that the raw material was made available in the domestic market for value addition in the textile sector.
The president said that as a result of the government’s policies, the economy had turned around and the stock exchange had bounced back. Moreover, the investors were showing their confidence in the economy by investing in the infrastructure projects while foreign investors were showing interest in the stocks and in the power sector.
Discussing the Thar coal project, the president said, “We need to find out-of-box solutions and work for a right energy mix to meet our power needs.”
