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Saturday, June 26, 2010
Failure to construct Kalabagh Dam to hurt KP: Shamsul Mulk* Former WAPDA chief says KP will fail to make maximum use of water from Indus, Kabul rivers without KBD
Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: If the Kalabagh Dam (KBD) is not constructed, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) will be adversely affected, as it will not receive a sufficient supply of water from other dams and neither will it benefit from other water projects that Pakistan may work on in future, Shamsul Mulk, former chairman of the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA), said on Friday.
Mulk was speaking at a seminar titled “Federal Budget: energy sector” organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SPDI) in collaboration with the Strengthening Democracy Through Parliamentary Development (SDPD) project – an undertaking of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP). The seminar – conducted by SDPI’s Nazar-e-Haider – was part of Post-Budget Orientation Series for members of parliament.
Mulk said that if the underground water level in KP was not raised through the construction of KBD, the province would not benefit from other water projects the government may initiate in the future. At the time when the KBD project was being shelved by the government, Mulk said he had told the president and other high-ranking that after 15 years when other provinces would be paying an Aabiana of Rs 400, KP farmers would have to pay Rs 10,000.
Optimum level: He said that without the KBD, the KP province would not be able to use the water from Kabul and Indus rivers to their optimum level.
As a citizen of KP, Mulk said, it was his right to try and safeguard the availability of maximum amount of water for the province.
The former WAPDA chairman said that the Bhasha Dam project would have also been completed if certain people had not lied. He offered to accept all alternatives to KBD if there were any. Mulk said, “We will not be able to stop Afghanistan if it decides to build a dam on Kabul River but the KBD will give Pakistan the right to raise objections to any Afghan plans in this regard”.
SDPI’s Arshad Abbasi said that 19 small hydro-electricity projects were abandoned due to the pressure from private power producers and the oil mafia. He said the Independent Power Producers did not want Pakistan to exploit cheap energy resources.
Awami National Party Senator Pervaiz Khan said rental power stations were not a solution to the country’s severe energy problems. He said that electricity from WAPDA was being purchased at the rate of Rs 0.50 per unit and later sold to KP at Rs 7 per unit.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk