Labourers of Suki Kinari project to go on strike

MANSEHRA: Labourers working on the 860 megawatts Suki Kinari Hydropower Project have announced to go on strike and block the main artery to traffic from April 16 against the low wages and other issues.

“A Chinese company working on this dam has agreed last month to release all incentives in accordance with labour policy of the government but now deviated from its announcement; this is why we are going on strike,” Ibrar Shah, the president of labour union, told reporters in Balakot on Saturday.

He said that more than 600 labourers working on the dam would stage a sit-in on Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad road against the Chinese companies working on the dam.

“Would you believe that labourers are fined and their daily wages are cut without any reason and when the issue is taken up with the highups, they expel labourers,” Ibrar Shah added.

He said the federal government in its talks with the committee of landowners had also agreed to hire services of locals for the dam but that agreement was also being violated and outsiders were also being hired even as labourers.

“We would also announce our future strategy at the sit-in as this is not an ordinary hydropower project launched at River Kunhar in Kaghan valley,” he added.

The Suki Kinari Hydropower Project is the only one in the energy sector being executed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.