Karachi : Chairman of National Business Group of FPCCI, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Monday said ignoring construction of dams amid growing population is a perfect recipe for economic disaster.

Water sacristy has reached to an alarming level which will shatter the economy and promote hunger if left unattended, he said.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that fancy projects are being preferred over critical projects for decades while billions have been borrowed for useless projects which is against the national interests.

Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that water scarcity is a national security issue for which the government and opposition must unite without any delay.

He said that PTI seemed serious about the construction of dams in the beginning but later other issues were considered important despite the fact that water availability has come down by over 1000 cubic meter since 1951.

Pakistan can only save ten percent of the river water against the global average of 40 percent while it has a capacity to save water for the need of ten days against the US capacity of 900 days.

Egypt has a storage capacity of 700 days and India can store water for 170 days but we have always neglected enhancing storage capacity as water projects take a lot of time and money and does not provide popularity as the fancy projects do.

He said that the construction of dams is a national security issue that cannot be ignored anymore otherwise water scarcity will damage agriculture and industrial sector prompting imports for food items and stocking unemployment as well as hunger