Defensive rejoinder: Long march should be about celebrating prosperity says CM

Pakistan’s future linked to vocational education, Shahbaz Sharif says.

LAHORE:

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday said that a long march was needed to celebrate progress and prosperity in the country.

He was talking to assembly members of various districts and delegations of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz workers in Murree.

He said the Punjab government had started a number of welfare programmes and had dedicated Rs345 billion for development schemes.

He said of this amount, Rs119 billion rupees would be spent for the uplift of south Punjab which would expedite development in the region.

The chief minister said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz believed in service delivery and improving living standards of the underprivileged.

“I want to make Punjab a model province in terms of development and prosperity,” he said.

The chief minister said a target of eight per cent annual growth rate had been fixed for the next four years and all government departments, public representatives and government functionaries would have to work hard to improve performance standards of the government.

Sharif said problems like poverty and unemployment could be overcome through investment in infrastructure, education and industrialisation. He said the government had planned a comprehensive strategy in this regard.

The chief minister said incentives and subsidies were being offered to investors for the development of the industrial sector.

He said the government aimed to create 4 million jobs in the next four years. He said Pakistan’s future was linked to vocational education for which a skilled workforce was needed. He said the government had started a number of programmes to promote technical education to meet needs of the market.

He said the Punjab government had also started a skills development programme in collaboration with the Department for International Development and thousands of men and women had been given technical training under the programme. He said the government wanted to provide vocational training to 200,000 workers in the next four years.

The chief minister said to correct historical imbalances, south Punjab had been allocated a budget that was greater than proportion of its population. He said Danish schools have also been set up in the region and hundreds of students were being educated at these schools.

The chief minister said the PML-N government wanted to solve the problems of the people as soon as possible.

“We are not blind to the problems of the common man,” he said. “But we prefer to act rather than create chaos,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th,2014.