Pakistan

Shehbaz slams opponents for 'raising south Punjab' slogans

The darkness of loadshedding and energy crises will be solved soon, claims chief minister

News Desk May 05, 2018

The Punjab CM said the PML-N wanted to usher in major changes in the country, but the PTI had hindered them by holding sit-ins. He alleged that the PTI sit-in in 2014 had delayed the visit of the Chinese president, otherwise many projects would have been launched much before . SCREENGRAB/FILE

Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday slammed his political opponents for raising slogans in favour of a new south Punjab province and said PML-N's opponents have not done any work for the region even when they were in power.

Speaking at the inauguration of Khawaja Fareed University, the chief minister also said that other political parties have failed to improve the situation in the south of Pakistan's most populous province.

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"We have placed solar panel parks in the Cholistan Desert, people are coming back to Pakistan from abroad to serve their homeland, such has been our progress," said the chief executive of the province while highlighting certain development projects undertaken by the incumbent government in southern Punjab.

"I dreamt of this university in 2015. Every female student used to get a stipend of Rs200 in government schools after the 6th grade, but I increased it to Rs1,000," said Shehbaz at the ceremony.

Commenting on the future of the university, Shehbaz said that right now it is a 'baby' project, and claimed it will soon become Pakistan's Cambridge or Oxford University. "The first phase of the university cost us Rs4.5 billion and the second phase cost Rs6 billion." He added that earlier nobody would've fathomed that Rahim Yar Khan would have such a technologically advanced university.

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"We will build 12 new universities in Punjab," he added. "This university will be fully air-conditioned in the summers and heated in the winters, it will also have a 20-bed hospital for its use. This university will also have swimming pools and computer laboratories."

Shehbaz said that under the leadership of Nawaz, the PML-N went ahead with CPEC and now thousands of megawatts of electricity are being produced. "Soon, the darkness of loadshedding and energy crises will be solved," he added.

He also criticised Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chief Imran Khan for saying that the chief minister of Punjab was more dangerous than ousted premier Nawaz Sharif.