It is an established fact that Allah has blessed us with a huge booty of natural resources including gas, oil and coal. But the bitter fact is that while the resources of natural gas and oil are being exploited, explored, developed and utilized, the worlds fifth largest coal reserves in Thar, and some major deposits elsewhere in Sindh are somehow not being explored, developed and used. We need to have a lot of coal-fired power plants in order to overcome the persisting loadshedding. That would boost the national economy and accelerate industrial and agricultural production. Only the other day, I heard WAPDA Chairman Shakeel Durrani say on TV channel that India is already in the process of setting up nine major power plants based on imported coal with an estimated total power generation of 35, 000 megawatts. He went on to say that our problem is that Thar coal reserves are yet to be developed and we can have coal-fired power plants only after Thar gets developed. It is criminal on the part of our leasers, both at the national and provincial levels that they have been ignoring our precious natural resources and continue to give preference to imports in the energy sector, obviously serving the petty vested interests of energy companies at the huge cost of our national interests. -ABDUL SAMAD KHWAJA, Karachi, May 7.