Former punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh
Jalandhar: Punjab has the second highest number of drug addicts in India after Nagaland, state Congress chief Amarinder Singh said Friday, quoting a United Nations Development Project report.
As many as 73 percent of the adults are addicts, Singh said, with 62 per cent of them between the ages of 19 and 24. He was speaking on the topic, ‘Punjab of my Dreams’, at the Punjab Press Club’s Meet the Press program.
Singh expressed concern over rising drug addiction and flayed the SAD-BJP government for not taking measures to keep the youth away from drugs.
Singh also lashed out at the government for its failure to mend the “miserable state” of primary education. Schools are without proper infrastructure and teachers, he claimed. “When we can’t lay good foundations at the primary level, how can we expect our youth to compete at the university level?” he asked. The state of healthcare, Singh said, was equally bad.
The former chief minister also accused the government of fiscal mismanagement. Punjab’s debt, Singh said, was likely to cross 1.7 lakh crore by the end of the current government’s term,so it was necessary the state generated its own resources. “We cannot survive on debts for a long time,” he added.
Punjab’s economy, Singh pointed out, was primarily agrarian and agriculture would continue to be its backbone. So there was a need to introduce high value cash crops, like BT cotton which his government had introduced and which “changed economy of southern Punjab by increasing production from 7 lakh bales per year to 30 lakh bales”, Singh said.
Singh, however, added that industry was equally important for the progress of the state. At present though, industry was moving out of Punjab as it was not getting the right kind of atmosphere, infrastructure and power, he claimed.
Singh said education, healthcare for common people, agriculture, industry would be top priorities of the Congress government if it comes to power after the Assembly elections scheduled for early next year.