The total estimated cost of Diamir Bhasha is around fourteen-hundred-and-fifty billion rupees. The Supreme Court in its funds’ collection campaign for Dams has collected four-hundred-and-forty-four million rupees in the first month (July 2018). With this speed, we can collect the required funds in 3,300 months or 275 years. Realizing this fact, the honorable judges have remarked that constructing this dam is not the responsibility of the courts but of the elected governments, who the courts will ultimately support. This way, the judiciary will be able to focus better on the more than 1.5 million pending cases. According to an estimate, fifty percent of all criminal cases are pending, due to administrative delays.
The judicial system’s ability to raise Rs 444 million in funds for the dam is highly inspiring at a time when the nation is tired of paying taxes and receiving no benefits in return. Providing proof of this are twenty-one million Pakistanis deprived of access to clean drinking water, fourteen thousand women dying during childbirth, due to lack of healthcare facilities, and youth unemployment rate of almost thirty percent.
On the positive side, Pakistan has millions of youths with great ideas and passion to take this country forward. In such times, depending on charity collections to construct dams; is just another obsolete idea. We need to find other resources and innovations which can speed up this process. The state should reduce the luxury expenses of its political elites, and corporate sectors should divert their social spending funds towards dams. Development of real-estate which is resulting is diminishing of agriculture lands should be taxed, deforestation penalized; and the money generated from such policies could help raise the necessary funds.
Moreover donations for dams may increase if Imran Khan as the Prime Minister of Pakistan declares them a flagship project of his government and urges people especially overseas Pakistanis for contributions who have always generously contributed for such causes whenever Pakistan was in need.
Let us suppose we decide to build these dams by 2022-23. We would need an average of twenty-four billion rupees a month to meet our target for Diamir Bhasha Dam alone.
One immediate contribution towards dam fund can be the Pakistan Television(PTV) fee that is regularly charged to over 3 million electricity consuming customers since 2010. PTV has become a failed TV channel due to political interference and minimal viewership. PTV collects more than rs.105 million a month and rs.1.260 billion annually. This is the amount that every Pakistani, whether he has TV or a radio at home, has been paying for a decade.
This is the time to involve experts in finding better ways with innovative ideas which will lead us to the construction of many dams, including Diamir Bhasha and Muhmand
In recent years, both Federal and Provincial governments spent billions of rupees on advertisements. Punjab and Sindh have funded promotions of their political leaders at the cost of the public exchequer. This amount which has exceeded fifty billion rupees in the past five years may be diverted towards hydro-electric power, and perhaps party funds should be allocated towards the promotion of political individuals.
There are hundreds of multinational firms in Pakistan which have Corporate Social Responsibility Funds (CSRF). They can be included as partners in dam construction projects, whereas in response the state should give them relaxation on certain duties.
Furthermore, the amount of public exchequer money that our corrupt elites laundered out of Pakistan should be brought back through legal action against those involved. An estimated ten billion rupees is laundered out of every year. An estimated 7,000 Pakistanis have properties of exceeding billions in UAE only, similarly, the ex-finance minister Ishaq Dar in 2014 claimed that Pakistanis on a whole have over two hundred billion rupees in Swiss banks.
Recently the commercialization of electronic media has played a key role in Pakistani politics. TV channels make billions of rupees in a day through commercials which ranges from rs.100,000 to 500,000 per spot. These commercials may be taxed which on one hand will help in collecting money for dams while on the other hand, TV channels will have more airtime for issue-based reporting, health, education and other social issues such as water conservation, that direly need attention.
When the new government will take control in August — it will have to make critical decisions including ones regarding the construction of dams which will play a guarantor role for future generations. This is the time to involve experts in finding better ways with innovative ideas which will lead us to the construction of many dams including Diamir Bhasha and Muhmand.
The writer is a media and communications professional. He can be contacted at [email protected] or Twitter: @zia051
Published in Daily Times, August 3rd 2018.