Govt asked to import power thru Chitral route

By Zar Alam Khan


ISLAMABAD: Elected representatives of Chitral have called upon the government to go for the shortest and most viable Wakhan-Chitral route for the proposed import of 1,000 megawatts electricity from Central Asia.

Talking to this correspondent, MNA Shahzada Mohiuddin, MPA Ghulam Mohammad and tehsil nazim Mastuj Shahzada Sikendarul Mulk pointed out that for the NWFP such an initiative also translates into opening up of a much-needed second trade corridor along the Khyber Pass, as the proposed route was not only geographically closer to Tajikistan and Kryghistan, but was also very secure since it had remained peaceful throughout the three decades of war and strife in Afghanistan.
The World Bank estimates the project cost at around $600 million. Given NWFP's close proximity to Tajikistan by a mere 35 miles, that is the distance separating Chitral from the Central Asian country, it becomes the natural choice for laying the high voltage transmission line via Boroghil Pass, the very junction separating the Amu Darya (Oxus River) from River Chitral (better known as Kabul River in NWFP).

They said on the Chitral side, a jeep track already exists up to Chikar (Petch Utz) at a distance of only 11 miles from Boroghil right across which a truck-able road exists on the Afghan side of Darwaza. The Tajik border town of Langar is a mere 13 miles away from Darwaza while the distance from Chitral's border to Khorog, the provincial capital of GABO (Gorno Badakshan Autonomous Oblasc), is just 137 miles - all having a truck-able road.

Moreover, Chitral is already linked with the national power grid and in contrast to the 1,300 kilometers to be covered if the Northern Areas route is taken the transmission line via Chitral will only be 700 kilometers to reach Peshawar.

They said the two other proposed routes were exorbitantly costly besides being danger prone. The first to pass via Kabul and connect to Quetta will have to cover 2,500 kilometers of treacherous insurgency-prone Taliban territory. Policy makers will have to think twice about the Kabul route, as Nato and Afghan forces have been unable even to ensure continuous gas supply from Balochistan. The second proposed route via the Ishkuman valley of the Northern Areas covering 70 per cent hard rock passes through three major glaciers and three mountain ranges - Karakoram, Hindukush and Himalayas - before covering around 1,300 kilometers to reach Pakistan's nearest national grid. It makes it a very costly and unfeasible proposition. The Northern Areas currently has no link with the national grid and work on the Basha-Diamer Dam will take at least 10-15 years. In contrast, if the transmission line were to follow the natural plateau of the Boroghil route into Chitral, it encounters no glaciers and follows the river bank with no mountain passes at all. Interestingly, studies by the German GTZ put Chitral's power generation capacity at 6,000-8,000 megawatts making it a potential source of cash to propel the national economy. Indigenous electricity generated from River Chitral, the NWFP's largest river, can be added to the same Central Asian transmission line thereby making it a dual purpose system besides making it a cost-effective proposition.

Without electricity, the province’s industrialisation through the creation of US-sponsored Reconstruction Opportunity Zones will remain a pipe dream and so will be the desire to wean people away from militancy into gainful employment. Americans who are encouraging this $600 million project to resolve the power crisis of Pakistan should also be keen to boost the NWFP economy by seeing that the landlocked province is linked to Central Asia. Upon completion, this route will also supplement the province’s income side-by-side the Khyber Pass as both the northern and southern portals of the Lowari Tunnel meet around November this year.--chitraltoday.com