LAHORE: Federal Minister for Water Resources Syed Javed Ali Shah Wednesday visited WAPDA House to have a briefing about its projects in water and hydropower sectors.
Welcoming the Federal Minister, WAPDA Chairman Lt. Gen Muzammil Hussain (Retd) said that WAPDA was fully focused on optimal utilization of water and hydropower resources to meet the increasing requirements of water and electricity in the country.
By implementing a multi-pronged strategy for about last one year, WAPDA has been able to turn-around the situation. Delays in the way to completion of the projects have been overcome and now these projects are fast heading towards completion.
The long-delayed Kachhi Canal Project (Phase-I) has been completed in August 2017 to irrigate 72,000 acres of barren land in Dera Bugti district of Balochistan. WAPDA will add 2487 MW low-cost hydel electricity to the National Grid from early to mid 2018 with completion of three hydropower projects in a phased manner namely Neelum Jhelum, Tarbela 4th Extension and Golen Gol.
Delayed for decades construction work on two mega multi-purpose projects i.e. Diamer Basha Dam and Mohmand Dam will commence in 2018. On completion, both projects will provide gross water storage capacity of more than 9 million acre feet (MAF) in addition to generating 5300 MW electricity. The Federal Minister appreciated WAPDA for its efforts to complete the long-delayed water and hydropower projects besides initiating construction work on a number of new projects. He expressed the hope that WAPDA projects would be completed in accordance with the timelines to cope with water and electricity needs.
Later in a briefing, the Federal Minister was informed that WAPDA is implementing seven projects in water and hydropower sectors with cumulative generation capacity of 9294 MW and gross water storage of more than 8 MAF. As many as eight projects with power generation capacity of 16296 MW are ready for construction, while about a dozen projects are at the stage of feasibility study and detailed engineering design.
