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CPEC new ray of hope for ‘real game-changer’ irrigation project
Last Updated: 2020-11-23 13:28 | Gwadar Pro
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by Khalid Aziz

ISLAMABAD, Nov.23 (Gwadar Pro) - Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province has intensified efforts for the inclusion of a key irrigation project in the second phase of CPEC, which experts believe could change the fortunes of nearly a million people overnight.

The Chashma Right Bank Canal (CRBC) lift-cum-gravity project is a long-pending scheme to irrigate around 300,000 acres of land especially in Dera Ismail Khan (D.I. Khan), KP’s southern districts. These are fertile lands but are not cultivated in the absence of irrigation water.

Dr. Shoaib of Agriculture University, D.I. Khan said that the project could lift people in four to five districts of KP from extreme poverty to an unprecedented level of prosperity. Presently, people having hundreds of acres of land here could hardly feed their families. However, if the CRBC lift canal project is executed, these poverty-stricken people will become millionaires in a matter of days, Dr. Shoaib commented. He labeled the project as a real game-changer scheme given its agricultural and economic impact on the vast population.

KP government has been asking the federal government to help it in executing the costly project, but the federal government has been skeptical for decades due to the nearly USD1 billion cost of the project. However, as Pakistan accelerated paperwork for the second phase of CPEC, the KP government extensively lobbied for the project to be taken up in the 10th Joint Cooperation Committee meeting. The federal government agreed with KP on the inclusion of the project in CPEC but after a review of its PC-1, after which Pakistan’s Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) was asked to revisit the project concept given the demographic and other developments in the region. Subsequently, on November 1, WAPDA sought proposals from interested parties for carrying out a fresh study of the project, a senior official in the KP irrigation department narrated.

Abid Rana, GM Media at WAPDA headquarter in Lahore, confirmed the news to this scribe and added that the proposals could be submitted by December 15, after which the same would be scrutinized.

Abdullah, an executive engineer at the nearby Gomal Zam Dam, stated that the CRBC lift canal project could bring about a revolution in southern districts of KP. He said that KP Chief Minister Mehmood Khan and provincial chief secretary were taking up the project at every relevant forum due to its importance. The KP Chief Minister thinks the project could make the province self-sufficient in food. Therefore, he is leaving no stone unturned to make it a reality, and CPEC has become a new ray of hope in this regard, Abdullah said.

(Editor:Wang Su)

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CPEC new ray of hope for ‘real game-changer’ irrigation project
Source:Gwadar Pro | 2020-11-23 13:28
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