Sami ur Rahman<\/p>\n
Last week, Federal Minister for interior, Mohsin Naqvi, paid a visit to the F-8 Exchange Square and Serena Square Interchange project sites in Islamabad and claimed that the construction of F-8 Underpass had been accomplished in a record 42-day span in the country\u2019s history. The Serena Square Interchange, likewise, will be completed in a record time due to its sensitive location, he added.
\nSuch fast-track projects that are carried out with the fabled \u2018Shahbaz (Hawk) Speed\u2019, are commendable in every sense of the word, but when such feats are witnessed by people from the less-developed areas of the country, they not only increase their inferiority complex, but also their sense of deprivation. For, projects such as these in their areas \u2013 if there are any at all \u2013 will take infinity and still won\u2019t come to fruition.
\nI first visited G-B (Gilgit-Baltistan) in December, 2018, as a sponsored member of a local NGO group. Our first destination was Gilgit. I was super-surprised to see that out of 24 hours hardly 2 hours of electricity was available in this main city. And even when it was, the voltage was so low that you could only light up a 7 or 12 watt LED bulb with it or charge your cellphone, and nothing more.
\nNext, we went to Passu, a small village on the main KKH (Karakorum Highway) in Upper Hunza, famous for its commanding view of the majestic Passu Cones. The locals over there informed us there was no power at all in winters. What they did to fight the freezing cold was to burn wood in the bukhari, a type of iron stove, attached with a chimney-like pipe in the roof. Mountains in G-B are largely barren and are devoid of trees and woods per se. That\u2019s to say, what little there\u2019s in the form of poplars or fruit trees, are burned in bukharis.
\nAfter spending a couple of days in Passu, I had to see my cousin, Dr. Arshad Hussain, in Karimabad, who was teaching mathematics at the Karakorum University, Hunza campus. He had this heartwarming good news for me that in Hunza at least things were not that bleak and that out of 24 hours the electricity supply was for one full hour. Yes, you read it right, one full hour out of twenty-four.
\n\u2018Were we living in the 21st century or what?\u2019 I screamed inside. It had been 71 years since independence. 71 years wasn\u2019t (which is now 77) a small period to make some difference. Now, if the locals \u2013 young and old, children and women alike in sub-zero temperature \u2013 do not come out in droves on the roads to record their protest and block the KKH, what else should they do? What these poor souls have to do anyway with the billions-dollar CPEC or the trillions-dollar OBOR that just cannot cater to their basic need of electricity?
\nIt\u2019s true that there\u2019s shortage of water in winter that makes it impossible to generate power for the two small facilities i.e. the mere 3-megawatt Misgar and 900 kilowatt Khyber hydropower stations that are the only official sources of electricity in Hunza. But, how about the white elephants of IPPs that gobble up billions of dollars annually from the national exchequer and \u2013 to borrow from the Urdu idiom \u2013 don\u2019t even mind to belch? Aren\u2019t people from the backward areas entitled to such an amenity-cum-luxury?
\nTo ameliorate the problem, the Aga Khan Fund, like so many other social welfare projects in the region, installed a one-megawatt solar system set-up last year in Duikar village, which is commonly known as the Eagle\u2019s Nest and is a renowned tourist attraction in Hunza. It too, however, failed to fix the problem due to low amount of sunrays in winter.
\nSo much for the winter season that somehow makes sense. The tragedy is the issue lingers on even in summers, and though, the so-called power production doubles, that is, where there\u2019s no power supply, it\u2019s an hour or so in summer; where there\u2019s an hour\u2019s, it gets two; while that of two hours get three or four, but isn\u2019t it a joke still?
\nTo see that nature has endowed Hunza with a natural dam in the form of the Attabad Lake, makes the situation even more tragic. Even after passing a decade and a half, the federal government has failed to take advantage of this reservoir. Every now and then, there would be rumors that a 54 megawatt dam is going to be built, that the feasibility report is in the pipeline, that construction work is soon going to be kick-started, but nothing whatsoever is seen on the ground. It\u2019s a classic tale of red tapism, government negligence, and extreme incompetence.
\nIn so far as the multi-billion Diamer-Basha Dam is concerned, it is not going to be completed before 2030. Every time, there\u2019s a new prime minister in the office, he\u2019d visit the site in a chopper, inaugurate the already inaugurated, install a new plaque in his name, and that is all. No mention of the small and more practical Attabad Dam at all, which has the potential of not only lighting up Upper and Lower Hunza, Nagar district and Gilgit, but also decreasing the anti-Punjab sentiments that are so rampant among the locals.
\nIf the federal government wants, it can build the three-year Attabad Dam project in the short span of a year and thus can make yet another national \u2018Shahbaz Speed\u2019 record, but to see that it is not Islamabad or Lahore, but Gilgit-Baltistan, a sense of pessimism overwhelms one\u2019s body and soul.<\/p>\n
The writer is a freelance columnist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sami ur Rahman Last week, Federal Minister for interior, Mohsin Naqvi, paid a visit to the F-8 Exchange Square and Serena Square Interchange project sites in Islamabad and claimed that the construction of F-8 Underpass had been accomplished in a record 42-day span in the country\u2019s history. The Serena Square Interchange, likewise, will be completed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13559],"class_list":{"0":"post-455383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-article","7":"tag-sami-ur-rahman"},"yoast_head":"\n