{"id":26647,"date":"2017-04-19T18:19:18","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T18:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/?p=26647"},"modified":"2017-04-19T18:19:18","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T18:19:18","slug":"pm-urges-opponents-not-to-indulge-in-blame-game-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/2017\/04\/pm-urges-opponents-not-to-indulge-in-blame-game-2\/","title":{"rendered":"PM urges opponents not to indulge in blame game"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 696px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-26647-1\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/x-flv\" src=\"http:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Prime-Minister-Muhammad-Nawaz-Sharif-Inaugurates-BHIKKI-Power-plant-at-Sheikhupura-19-04-17-.flv?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Prime-Minister-Muhammad-Nawaz-Sharif-Inaugurates-BHIKKI-Power-plant-at-Sheikhupura-19-04-17-.flv\">http:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Prime-Minister-Muhammad-Nawaz-Sharif-Inaugurates-BHIKKI-Power-plant-at-Sheikhupura-19-04-17-.flv<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>BHIKKI, April 19 (APP): Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif Wednesday urged his political opponents not to indulge in the blame game, else they would end up in oblivion as the people would only remember Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz for its service to them.\u2028Addressing a gathering after inaugurating the operationalisation of the first phase of Bhikki power plant, adding 717 MW to the national grid, Nawaz Sharif said, \u201cThe newcomers in politics can only lie, do sit-ins, level baseless allegations and make tall claims.\u201d\u2028\u201cFear Allah, stop politics of allegations, else you too will go into oblivion and in the end only Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz will be in the fore,\u201d Nawaz Sharif said.\u2028He said despite their efforts they had failed to win the hearts of the people and mentioned the defeat of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) candidate in a by-election yesterday.\u2028\u201cWe earlier won by 8,000 votes in 2013 general election, but yesterday we got lead of over 22,000 votes, despite the fact that all other political forces backed the PTI candidate,\u201d he said.\u2028The Prime Minister was also critical of the previous Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government in its failure to address the serious issue of power outages and said those, who were responsible for the current loadshedding, were today threatening to lodge protest.\u2028\u201cYou must be ashamed of yourself. Had you considered Pakistan your own country and served the nation with honesty and dedication, we would not have faced such a bad situation,\u201d the Prime Minister said.\u2028He said Balochistan was abandoned by the previous governments and now several development projects were near fruition there. He regretted that the previous governments never bothered to undertake any development project in the province.\u2028He said the federal government was pleased to undertake several development projects in Karachi and Sindh, despite the fact that it was provincial responsibility.\u2028The Prime Minister said there was no such tendency in the country to complete such large projects in a short span of 18 months. Operationalization of Bhikki plant in 18 months was a new chapter in the country\u2019s history of progress and prosperity, he added.\u2028He said there had been a trend in the past to complete a project costing Rs 10 billion in Rs 100 billion and mentioned delays in completion of Lowari Tunnel, Nandipur, and Neelum Jhelum.\u2028\u201cHad Shahbaz Sharif not taken personal interest and not monitored the project, the cost would have escalated,\u201d he said and referred to Haveli Bahadur and Baloki projects, where the savings were to the tune of Rs 154 billion.\u2028\u201cHad we moved at this pace in the past 70 years, Pakistan would have been an economic power today.\u201dThe Prime Minister said the delay in Haveli Bahadur\u2028Shah and Baloki projects was due to delay in shipment of turbines and all efforts were being made to complete them\u00a0in time. Every month a new project would be inaugurated, he added.\u2028He said Chashma 315 MW would be operational in May while many others were in the pipeline. Several projects would be completing by next year and around 10,000 MW would be available by June next year.\u2028Nawaz Sharif said the Punjab government had spent from its own resources on the Haveli Bahadur Shah, Baloki and Bhikki projects.\u2028He said strict action would be taken against those, who were responsible for the current loadshedding.\u2028He said there had been a seven per cent increase in the demand of electricity against four per cent in the past. The country was moving ahead at a fast pace as was evident from the growing demand, he added.\u2028He said Bhasha and Dasu dams would complete in next few years, adding 9,000 MWs to the system.\u2028Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif termed the completion of the gas power plant in 18 months a record and said owing to transparent bidding, the government had saved a huge amount of Rs 50 billion. The plant would provide power at the cheapest rate of Rs 7.37 per unit, he added.\u2028He said apart from power generation projects, his government was working on road building projects and pointed to efforts for completion of the motorway from Karachi to Peshawar by 2020.\u2028He said Rs 1,000 billion was being spent on road building\u00a0projects alone across the country. New airports and\u00a0other projects were being built. There had been marked\u00a0improvement in the working of the Railways, while a new\u00a0airport was being constructed for Islamabad.\u2028The Prime Minister was accompanied by Punjab Governor Muhammad Rafique Rajwana and Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Muhammad Asif,\u00a0Minister for Petroleum Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Minister of State Abid Sher Ali, Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong and\u00a0provincial ministers.\u2028The Prime Minister earlier inaugurated the Bhikki power plant, adding 717 MW to the national grid and lessening woes of the people facing long hours of load shedding.\u2028Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked the Prime\u00a0Minister for sparing time for the inauguration of the project\u00a0built in the shortest possible timeframe and at record low\u00a0cost.\u2028He lauded the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his commitment and vision to address the serious issue of power shortage and said he took the country forward despite the problems created by the sit-in protestors and their delaying tactics in taking the country forward.\u2028He said the PTI\u2019s sit-in in Islamabad was a heinous\u00a0conspiracy against the country as its protestors refused to\u00a0budge even during the visit of the Chinese President to\u00a0Pakistan. The visit had to be postponed for over 10\u00a0months and the country\u2019s march towards progress and prosperity delayed, he added.Shehbaz Sharif said the project along with other similar projects in Punjab were a glaring proof that the government was committed to ending the curse of loadshedding for good.\u2028He termed it a land mark project and said the current project was far more efficient than those in Haveli Bahadur Shah, Baloki, Sahiwal and Guddu.\u2028The Chief Minister said no project in the world could become operational in a short period of 18 months after facing teething problems.\u2028He was critical of those, who looted billions in the\u00a0Nandipur project and said the PML-N government had to spend an additional amount of around Rs 20 billion to make it operational. He said the Pakistan Peoples Party government had initiated the project without any transparency as it was supposed to complete at a cost of Rs 33 billion.\u2028\u201cThose, who looted this nation, today shout at the top of their voice in claiming that they served the people,\u201d he added.\u2028Shehbaz Sharif while recalling the statement that the Panama verdict would be remembered for centuries to come, said what the Prime Minister had done for Pakistan would be cherished by the people for at least next 40 years, the operational life of the power plants.\u2028Aahad Cheema, Chief Executive Officer of the Quaid-e-Azam Power Plant, said the Rs 77 billion project, which would run on liquefied natural gas, was the most cost efficient plant and would serve as a model for future projects.\u2028He said Rs 16 billion would be saved in next 12 years in operations and management alone, while overall Rs 320 billion would be saved over the project life of 30 years. He also gave a comparison with other projects and said Bhikki would generate power at a rate of $466 per KW.\u2028He thanked the provincial and federal governments for fast tracking the processing, procurement, transportation, customs clearance etc for the project.\u2028Mohammad Ali, President &amp; CEO of General Electric\u2019s Gas Power Systems \u2013 Projects, in the Middle East, North Africa and India, said the plant was an example of the government\u2019s commitment towards addressing the serious issue of power shortages. He said his company was providing 25 per cent of power plants for various ongoing projects. He said there were over 1000 engines operating in the country, many using biogas.\u2028The Prime Minister was briefed about the salient features of the project. He was taken around the control room of the plant and was informed about its highly efficient environment-friendly operations.\u2028The plant would save Rs 320 billion in operational cost alone in next 30 years. The highest output gas plant was built at the lowest cost ever leading to the lowest production cost in the world of $466,000 per megawatt (MW).\u2028The Bhikki power plant, a key project of the Punjab government, upon completion would provide a total of 1,180 MW. The project runs on General Electric 209HA Combined Cycle Technology, being executed by Harbin Electric International as EPC Contractor.\u2028The project, near Sheikhupura, has been completed\u00a0jointly by AEPL, General Electric, Harbin Electric\u00a0International and their construction contractor Tianjin\u00a0Electric.\u2028He was informed that the plant would also have record efficiency of 61.59 per cent as compared to other power generation plants in the country.\u2028The Prime Minister, who earlier visited the project in February this year to monitor the progress, said eliminating load shedding from the country was his government\u2019s major challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BHIKKI, April 19 (APP): Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif Wednesday urged his political opponents not to indulge in the blame game, else they would end up in oblivion as the people would only remember Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz for its service to them.\u2028Addressing a gathering after inaugurating the operationalisation of the first phase of Bhikki power [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-video","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-national","8":"post_format-post-format-video"},"video_url":["http:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Prime-Minister-Muhammad-Nawaz-Sharif-Inaugurates-BHIKKI-Power-plant-at-Sheikhupura-19-04-17-.flv"],"featured_media_src_url":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/3-24-1024x576.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26651,"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26647\/revisions\/26651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vid.app.com.pk\/vid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}