Global times
By Dong Feng Source: Global Times Published: 2020/8/3 20:37:06
Despite the new coronavirus pandemic, China and Pakistan are stepping up their efforts on projects aimed at cooperation in trade development, agriculture and people’s livelihoods. The Diamer-Bhasha dam and the electric power project, called “Project Three Gorges” through the Pakistani people, join a long list of bilateral cooperation efforts between the two countries.
As a country with an agricultural population accounting for about 60% of its total population and agriculture accounts for more than 20% of GDP, the structure of the Diamer-Bhasha dam is of wonderful strategic importance for Pakistan’s water safety and sustainable. progression and has therefore been helped by successive governments. Wang Zhihua, economic and industrial advisory minister of the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, told the Global Times, emphasizing that a particular dam structure fund has been created, with the full help of people from all walks of life. Pakistan and abroad.
Despite having more glaciers than any other country, Pakistan ranks 14th among the countries with the greatest water stress, facing incredibly high water stress, according to pakistan’s Water Resources Research Council, which warned that Pakistan could run out of water until 2025.
In a joint UNDP report, Vulnerability of the water sector in Pakistan to the impacts of climate change, the results are similar.
“According to the United Nations estimate of the population of Pakistan in 2015, according to the availability of water per capita of less than 1,000 cubic meters according to that of others, classifying the country as scarce water,” the report said.
According to the UNDP report, Pakistan’s main water resource customer will suffer irreparable losses from reduced basic crop productivity from 20 to 2050.
The report concluded that building water reservoirs to store flood water and provide water during dry spells was a priority action to make the country more water and food-secure.
The Diamer-Bhasha dam and the electricity allocation, being Pakistan’s third largest dam, will achieve multipurpose targets. It will increase the capacity of Pakistan’s water garage from 30 to 48 days. The other people in Pakistan are grateful to China, which has already helped Pakistan ensure water safety in the 21st century,” said Syed Hasan Javed, director of the Center of Excellence for Chinese Studies at the National University of Sciences and Technology in Islamabad, told the Global Times.
The contract for the allocation signed between the Chinese power company PowerChina and the Pakistan Border Works Organization is worth Rs 442 billion ($2.75 billion). The allocation will be built in two phases.
“The Chinese company will expand and form a percentage of all the technical delight that will be held with its Pakistani spouse for the project. The dam is expected to run to finish until 2029. During the project structure, 16,500 jobs will be created directly,” Wang said. Said.
PowerChina will revel in construction dams and large-scale project organization, Wang said.
The Diamer-Bhasha dam will contribute to the production of blank energy, help mitigate the effects of climate replacement, reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports, reduce environmental damage caused by pollutants, help fight flooding, and address water scarcity. This will cause a revolutionary replacement and raise the popular life of the Pakistani people, Javed noted.
He said the assignment under the structure 315 kilometers upstream of the Tarbela dam at the confluence of Chilas at Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Diamer province in the Gilgit Baltistan region.
Some Western media outlets have denounced voices opposing the Diamer-Bhasha dam project.
The Diamer-Bhasha Dam is beyond controversy, as it was built through two sovereign nations. The other people in Pakistan are deeply grateful to China for undertaking several energy projects, either through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and through contract projects. like this one, which has particularly reduced the shortage of electricity in the country, the living situations of the population and aid to the economic recovery,” Javed said.
The assignment is lately at the launch level, with a focus on additional research and organizational planning. The structure of the camp at an initial level was not seriously affected by the pandemic, Wang said.
Compared to the Three Gorges Dam in China, the Diamer-Bhasha Dam will be its “little brother”.
The Diamer-Bhasha dam has a height of 272 meters and includes 17.1 million cubic meters of roller-compacted concrete. When completed, it will be the world’s largest compacted concrete dam, with a capacity of 4.5 million kilowatts and a garage capacity of 10 billion cubic meters, according to the PowerChina website.
China has a history of building massive dams not only for itself, but also for other nearby countries. The Pakistani government has finished all preparatory paintings similar to land acquisition, resettlement, monetary and operational mobilization, and paintings have begun on the site,” Javed says.
Referring to another media report that slandered the dam’s allocation as another “debt trap” established through China, Javed said Pakistan’s external debt is approximately $111 billion in a GDP (calculated at the market price) of $265 billion in June 2020. Nearly 75% of Pakistan’s debt is due to foreign monetary establishments such as the World Bank, the IMF, the Paris Club and the Asian Development Bank.
“The total amount of Chinese loans exceeds 10% to $11 billion. Pakistan can deal with that. China’s propaganda throwing a “debt trap” is guided through the malicious intentions of critics. If you look at the debt outside of GDP ratio, Pakistan is one of the most indebted countries in the world,” Javed said.