Issue of land acquisition for Dasu project resolved

ISLAMABAD: The government on Monday claimed that issue regarding land acquisition for run-of-river 4,320-megawatt Dasu Hydropower Project have been resolved as Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) on Monday approved stage-1 of the project and work on the scheme will be started soon.

The Dasu Hydropower Project will have total installed capacity of 4,320 Megawatts of electricity with 12 generating units and is among the priority projects under the National Water Policy. This is run of the river project in district Kohistan of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In Budget 2019/20, the federal government has allocated Rs55 billion for this project.

Minister for Water Resources Faisal Vawda said while addressing a news conference here said that due to inaction and ill planning of the previous government Dasu Hydropower Project was delayed for around three and half year which was causing a loss of up to Rs360 million on daily basis to the country.

He also announced that a special plan was devised for Sindh which would be a surprise to the people and the name of Prime Minister Imran Khan would be written in the history with golden words. The minister, however, said that Prime Minister Imran Khan would himself announce the plan. He said that there are a lot of projects in Sindh that are abandoned despite availability of funds. In future no funds will be released to the abandoned projects, he added.

On Dasu Hydro project the minister said that Ecnec approved the stage 1 of project and revised the cost for land acquisition and land development. The project is financed by the World Bank and Wapda and is designed to provide 4,320MW of electricity in two stages.

Previous government had taken loan for the project without resolving the land issue for it. The delay was a criminal negligence which has caused loss of billions of rupees to the national exchequer. The minister announced that an inquiry was being conducted to find those responsible for the delay of this mega project. The phase-I of the project will be completed in four years, he added.

The PML-N had inaugurated 34 projects without proper fund arrangement and, therefore, were able to complete only two of them. The incumbent government would start only those projects for which funds were available, he maintained.

Minister said that the provinces are not executing the flood River Act and legislation related to flood. He said that the provinces have been asked to remove encroachments in the flood plains to reduce the losses to public and private properties.

Conspiracies, such as Dawn leaks and video leaks, were being hatched to malign state institutions. The government would not bow down and the process of accountability would continue, the minister stated categorically.

He said, earlier, conspiracy was hatched to malign National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and now such tactics were being made to degrade judiciary. He said that action will be taken against the black mailers characters.