ISLAMABAD – Prime Minister Imran Khan made an impassioned appeal to allPakistanis, particularly its overseas diaspora on Friday to donate funds inUS dollars to help the country build dams, as it faced major droughts bythe year 2025.
“The future of our next generations will be in jeopardy, if we do not takeany urgent steps to build water reservoirs,” Prime Minister Imran Khan saidin an address broadcast on the national television networks and said thecountry faced a “serious crisis”.
“Construction of a dam for Pakistan today is inevitable,” Imran Khan saidand pointed that the country had an average water storage capacity of only30 days, as compared to 190 days of India and 1000 days for Egypt. He saidon an average, a country should have 120 day storage capacity.
He said in 1947, the water storage for each Pakistani was around 5600 cubicmeters, while today, it had dwindled to 1000 cubic meters.The prime minister said the experts had already warned about the impact ofclimate change on Pakistan and said the country was expected to be hit by adrought by the year 2025. He warned that Pakistan would not have any waterfor its crops and for feeding its people.
“I laud the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Saqib Nisar for hisinitiative for launching funds for the construction of dams.” He admittedthat though it was not the job of the Chief Justice to take this step, butit was the responsibility of the political leadership of the country. Hehowever regretted that they failed to do their duty.
Chief Justice Saqib Nisar took the initiative of collecting fund forconstruction of Diamir Bhasha and Mohmand dams from the people of Pakistanand to build the gigantic projects without any foreign assistance on July6. According to the information available on the official website of theSupreme Court an amount of Rs 1.9 billion had been added to the fund bythis evening.The prime minister announced merger of the Prime Minister’s Fund and thatof the Chief Justice and made an appeal to the overseas Pakistanis to sendin remittances for the dams in US dollars.
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“I urge all overseas Pakistanis to send in at least 1000 US dollars each.Those who cannot send it in one go, they may send as much as they can,”Imran Khan said and added that there were around eight to nine millionPakistanis living abroad.
“We will not only get the money for the dams, but will also get theurgently needed foreign exchange reserves,” the Prime Minister said. Heexpressed the hope that with the funds available, Pakistan will be able tobuild the dams in five years.
He said the overseas Pakistanis had always stood by him in the past andsupported his initiatives of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital and NamalCollege, Mianwali.“We won’t need any loans,” Khan said, “I promise to protect every penny ofyour hard earned money.”
Imran Khan directed all PTI chapters abroad and all those of otherpolitical parties to launch a ‘jehad’ to collect these funds for Pakistan.He said in the briefings he had received in the past one fortnight, he wasastonished to find out the quantum of challenges the country faced. He saidthe total loans the country owed were Rs 6000 billion (Rs 6 trillion) tenyears back, but today they had swelled to Rs 30,000 billions (Rs 30trillion). The water crisis was the most serious crisis confronting thecountry, he added.
