Pakistan’s green-leaning prime minister inaugurates 800MW Mohmand dam

Prime Minister Imran Khan addressing the ground breaking ceremony of Mohmand Hydropower Dam project in northwestern Pakistan. (PID)

PM Imran Khan inaugurated Mohamand Dam along with former Chief Justice Saqib Nisar and Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. (PID)

• Dam expected to be completed at a cost of Rs183 billion by 2024
• Pakistan needs to store at least 25 million acre feet of water each year to help shore up water security

PESHAWAR: Prime Minister Imran Khan performed the ground-breaking of the Mohmand Hydropower Dam project in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, as the country faces worsening water scarcity.
Pakistan needs to store at least 25 million acre feet (MAF) of water each year to help shore up water security, and that requires building a series of new large dams.
The Mohmand Dam is being constructed on the Swat River near Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and will be completed at a cost of Rs183 billion by 2024. The dam has the capacity to store 300,000 cusecs of water and will generate some 800MW of electricity once completed. A sum of Rs2 billion has been allocated for the project in the Public Sector Development Program 2018-19.
“The water crisis is a nationwide issue that persists,” Khan said in a speech at the ground-breaking ceremony. “And this is linked to the construction of water reservoirs. Big dams were not built in the past.”
Last year, Mian Saqib Nisar, then the country’s chief supreme court judge, donated a million Pakistani rupees ($7,400) of his own money to start a fundraising drive for dams, calling water shortages a major national threat.
The drive aimed to raise as much as a staggering $14 billion toward the cost of installing water reservoirs and other equipment for two major dams.
Nisar retired in January but the current panel of top judges have taken over the push. According to December 2018 data available from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), a total of Rs8.46 billion was deposited in the dam fund.
“A chief justice has raised an issue which should have been done by the then government,” Khan said, referring to the past government of three time prime minister Nawaz Sharif. “I thank Justice Saqib Nisar for this.”
The prime minister said that the reason dams were not built in Pakistan was because they could not be completed within five years, the length of a Pakistani government’s term under the constitution, and therefore politicians did not focus on the issue because it was not considered politically expedient. He said that even though former president Ayub Khan was a military ruler, he should be commended for “thinking in the long term” and building dams at Warsak, Tarbela and Mangla.
The ground-breaking ceremony of the Mohmand project was attended by Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Nisar and other senior civil and military officials and tribal elders.
According to reports, the preliminary feasibility study for the dam was conducted by the Water and Power Development Authority back in 1969. Over 8,000 acres of land have been acquired for the project and its infrastructure, including 50 kilometers for a reservoir, regulation pond and irrigation network.
A JICA feasibility report in March 2000 claimed the project area for Mohmand dam was located in a highly active tectonic zone and in a region of high seismicity.
A 2015 IMF report put total annual availability of water at 191 million acre feet (MAF), which it said would become insufficient by 2025 when demand is expected to rise to 274 MAF.
Khan is widely considered to be an environmentalist who says he wants to fight climate change and pollution, mainly by planting trees on government land clawed back from politically connected landlords who have illegally profited from it for years.
This February, Khan inaugurated the first nature reserve and wildlife park on such reclaimed land at Balloki Headworks on the River Ravi in Nankana Sahib district, about an hour’s drive from the city of Lahore.
On Feb. 9, he planted the first of 652,500 saplings, mainly local species, to be put in by April on 1,500 acres (607 hectares) which had previously been turned into farm fields.
Khan has promised to plant 10 billion trees across the country over the next five years. He hopes to scale up the success of the “Billion Tree Tsunami” in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where his party has been protecting existing forests and planting new trees since 2013.