Rs25b earmarked for building Bhasha and Mohmand dams

islamabad — The government has made a special allocation to start construction of Bhasha Dam and Mohmand Dam and enhanced the water sector allocation from Rs36 billion to Rs65 billion for the next fiscal year.

Pakistan is facing an acute water shortage requiring special interventions and that was why the authorities have increased the allocation to conserve water and its augmentation during the year 2018-19.

The Annual Development Plan (ADP), highlighting initiatives under the Public Sector Development Programme for next fiscal, on Sunday showed that to start construction of Bhasha Dam and Mohmand Dam, Rs23 billion and Rs2 billion have been earmarked respectively.

The others water sector projects includes seven new schemes, worth Rs849 billion, which will start in 2018-19 to conserve and

augment water resources. These new schemes are national flood protection plan-IV, Diamer Basha Dam Project (dam part), CRBC 1st lift cum gravity project D I Khan, Mohmand Dam Hydropower Project (dam part), lining of KB feeder upper canal for water supply to Karachi city, rehabilitation and

modernisation of Sukkur Barrage (90% World Bank, 10% federal government) and Construction of feeding canal to Manchar Lake to eradicate contamination.

Similarly, for the fast track development of special areas, an amount of Rs62 billion (Azad Jammu and Kashmir Rs22 billion, Gilgit-Baltistan Rs15 billion and Fata Rs25 billion), has been allocated.

To display export items and attract importers expo centres will be constructed across the country. Besides construction of expo centres in Peshawar, Islamabad and Quetta, the expo centre of Karachi will be upgraded at a cost of Rs8,000 million.

In order to bring Fata in the mainstream, a 10-year development plan with a total outlay of Rs100 billion has been approved and during 2018-19, an amount of Rs10 billion has been earmarked for implementation of the plan.

To engage youth in productive activities a plan has been made to construct stadiums.

The programme includes building of 100 stadiums all over the country at a cost of Rs2,500 million.