Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday inaugurated a 75-kilometre-long section of the Karachi-Hyderabad M-9 Motorway.
Addressing the inauguration ceremony, the premier expressed satisfaction that work on the motorway is “60 per cent complete”.
“Today, people are witnessing a naya Pakistan being built,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said. “Motorways are no longer a distant dream. All promises will be fulfilled by 2018.”
“Today the world is seeing a naya Pakistan.”
“We spent day and night trying to strengthen the economy. Today the nation is beginning to stand on its own two feet.”
“Bridges, interchanges and service roads are being built. On the other side, work on the Multan-Sukkur motorway has been intitiated… Building the nation is not a game,” he added.
“When we took the reigns of the country, we were in a sorry economic state. There were youngsters with skills but no one to employ them. In such times, there are negative forces that try to mislead these youngsters,” he cautioned.
“Any country in the world that has become modern started with creating better infrastructure… and Pakistan could have seen the progress that we started in 1999 had we not been stopped halfway through,” he said.
“Electricity had abandoned us, as if it was unhappy with is. But we have started bringing it back to Pakistan. 1,000 megawatts will be added to the grid this year,” he said signalling the government’s intent to rely more on renewable energy.
“Load shedding will end completely in 2018. Solar power and wind mill projects are being created. We are looking ahead, thinking of the future requirement for power,” he added.
“These are the problems we are focusing on, we don’t have time for dharnas,” he said in a veiled reference to his opposition.
He challenged the opposition to compete against him on the basis of progress and development.
Construction on the 136-kilometre-long six-lane motorway began in Sept 2015 and is expected to be completed by March 2018 at a cost of Rs36 billion, Radio Pakistan reported.
The completed section of the M-9 has four interchanges ─ the Dada Bhoy, Industrial Valley, Nooriabad and Thano Bola Khan interchanges.
These interchanges will provide access to various areas, including Keer Thar National Park, Jhampeer, Kinjhar Jheel and Thano Ahmed Khan.
