Authorities urged to allow dam employees to meet families

MANSEHRA: People of the Kaghan valley have demanded the district administration to end the coronavirus lockdown at the Suki Kinari Hydropower Project so that thousands of labourers confined on the dam site for a long time could visit their homes.

“While restrictions imposed on the labourers’ mobility on such energy projects have been lifted in the country and abroad, thousands of labourers executing the Suki Kinari dam are still confined and cannot visit to families for the last one year,” Shabbir Hussain Shah, a member of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Youth Assembly, told reporters after meeting the deputy commissioner here on Monday.

He said that the execution of the 880-megawatt dam was underway at Kunhar River in the Kaghan valley for the last several years.“Thousands of labourers who had left the dam site to meet families have been deprived of their employment,” Shah alleged.

He said that most of the labourers couldn’t visit their families for the last one year or more, because they would lose their jobs if they left the dam site. Shah said that the deputy commissioner, after hearing the complaints raised by them, assured to redress the grievances.