NESPAK wins Diamer-Bhasha Dam’s consultancy contract
A National Engineering Services Pakistan(NESPAK) has successfully incurred the consultancy contract of Diamer-Bhasha Dam through competitive bidding on Wednesday evening. The agreement took place signed at Mega Hydel Complex, Islamabad. General Manager including the chief executive Officer, the Project Director Diamer-Basha Development Company and the Diamer-Bhasha Consultants Group (DBCG) authorized representative Dr Tahir Masood, MD NESPAK, signed the agreement on behalf of WAPDA and the Joint Venture respectively.
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The Federal Minister for water Resources, Faisal Vawda WAPDA chairman Lt Genral(retd) Muzammil Hussain including other official were present at the bidding. Diamer Bhasha Dam is proposed to be constructed on the Indus River. The site is 315 km upstream of Tarbela Dam Project, some 180 km below the town of Gilgit and 40 km downstream of Chilas, the headquarter of District Diamer in Gilgit-Baltistan.
Due to sinister campaigns such as #NoDamOnIndusRiver 🇵🇰has not been able to build water reservoirs upstream on rivers which results in frequent floods downstream in regions Balochistan & #Sindh resulting in water losses of $25billion. pic.twitter.com/QX52NDSc17
— Dr Fatima K – PTI (FOLLOW 4 ANY MEDICAL ADVICE ) (@p4pakipower) May 18, 2020
The project comprises construction of 272 m high Roller Compacted Concrete Dam (RCC), spillway, power intake, waterway tunnels and underground powerhouse one each on right and left side abutment. It is aimed to generate 4500 mega Watt of low cost hydal energy and has capacity of 8.1 million-acre feet (MAF) to store the water. The dam will unexpectedly irrigate 1.23 MAF of irrigated land.
Controversial construction of Diamer-Bhasha Dam on Indus River:
The World Sindhi congress- an organisation of Sindhi people living abroad has condemned the construction of the Diamer-Bhasha Dam. It is believed that the dam will increase the shortage of water to already struggling water-scarce Sindh province’s irrigated land. In addition to it, few days ago more than 4 lac people participated in the campaign against the construction of Diamer-Bhasha Dam.
Dams in Sindh have stopped drying up. Sindh enemy plan not approved. #NoDamOnIndusRiver pic.twitter.com/M2pcxQHogo
— Shabnam Soomro (@Shabnam13958048) May 16, 2020
Interestingly not only people, civil society and the politicians from Sindh opposed its construction, but the voice was also raised by many renowned journalists, civil society members and literate people in Pakistan.
