It is surprising that Dr Mubarikmands disclosure about enormous quantities of Pakistans unexplored mineral wealth has neither been given due importance by political leaders nor by the media. According to the distinguished nuclear scientist, Pakistan is one of the richest countries of the world in respect of mineral reserves. He made this disclosure in a panel discussion on a private TV channel followed by his address during 9th convocation of the Government College University (GCU). As per the recent evaluation, the copper and gold reserves in Balochistan have an estimated value of 273 billion dollars. Similar reserves have also been discovered in North Waziristan. According to a press report the Balochistan government has protested to the Federal government for not taking its consent while awarding the exploration contract to a foreign company. Being shrouded in mystery, it is desired that the Supreme Court of Pakistan should take suo moto notice of this contract as it has done in the case of IPPs. The most encouraging and the highly delightful disclosure that Dr Mubarikmand made was that our coal reserves were capable of producing 50,000 megawatt of electricity and 100 million barrels of diesel just through the process of gasification. He also disclosed that a group of talented students had already carried out successful project to make diesel from the coal gas. According to him, the coal reserves were large enough to meet our energy requirements for about 500 years. Dr Mubarikmand expressed the view that if proper exploration was carried out in this regard Pakistan would be a developed state in next 10 to 20 years. I suggest that we should invest the money recovered from the IPPs in this project and save the coming generations from the misery that we are going through. RAFI NASIM, Lahore, December 10.