LAHORE: Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) on Monday finally acquired 14,325 acres of land for the completion of 4500 Mega watt (MW) Diamer Basha Dam project.
The private land is situated 40 kilometers (km) downstream of Chilas, the district headquarters of Diamer in Gilgit-Baltistan. The Diamer-Basha Dam project is spread on a land that is home to 32 villages and may affect the cultivation land owned by the people.
WAPDA’s General Manager of the human resource development, land acquisition and resettlement department Brigadiar (r) Shoaib Taki said that this was a great achievement by WAPDA as the land acquisition had been a long-awaited requirement for the project to start. He added that 85 percent of the total land acquisition and about 95 percent land for the reservoir had been completed.
Taki stated that WAPDA had completed Harpan Das village of the three proposed village models, where community infrastructure had been developed and plots were ready to be allotted as compensation to the displaced people. He added that the piece of land along the disputed boundary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) were a major holdup in the project’s implementation.
He added that the land for other two proposed village models was yet to be acquired, so the resettlement pace of the project could also cause delay in the project. Taki said that WAPDA had proposed linking the resettlement of Harpan Das with the completion of other two village models Tak Das and Sagachal Das.
The resettlement plan as per WAPDA will be a challenge as inhabitants of Thak Das are not ready to surrender land for the establishment of model village. He said that the land acquisition was the responsibility of the government yet WAPDA had been contributing equally to complete the acquisition process of the total land. He stated that if the process wasn’t completed as soon as possible, the project’s implementation would suffer badly.