Ghani urged to deliver on Machalgho Dam promise

GARDEZ (Pajhwok): A number of residents and their representatives on Saturday demanded of the government to resume construction work on Machalgho Dam in southeastern Paktia province.

They said President Ashraf Ghani had strongly promised completion of the dam, but work on the dam which was brought to a halt about three years ago was yet to be resumed.

A Pajhwok Afghan News on Dec 6, 2014 quoted Paktia officials as saying that construction work on the Machalgho power dam had come to a halt.

Completion of the dam in Ahmadabad district will help generate hundreds of megawatts of electricity and irrigate vast tracts of barren land.

The Ministry of Water and Power inked an agreement with an Afghan-Russian company to construct the dam four years back.

Ismail Khan, then energy and water minister, had pledged the project would be executed in three years but only 20 percent of work had been done so far.

Being built at a cost of $34 million, the dam will produce 404 megawatts of electricity and irrigate 1,824 hectares of land.

Paktia provincial council head, Mir Bahramzai, told a gathering held on Saturday that the dam project had a huge importance for Paktia and its residents. He said the dam’s completion should not be further delayed for being crucial for agricultural development and self-sufficiency.

“The president knows well the dam’s advantages; President Ghani! If this dam is constructed, it will be very helpful for agriculture and will make us self-reliant.”

A tribal elder, Khwani Jahani, said work on the dam had been inaugurated thrice by former water and energy minister and other high-ranking officials, but so far barely three percent work had been done.

He said the president had promised to construct the dam and increase the dam’s power production capacity to 20MGW. “We have offered many sacrifices for this dam, its security is ensured by locals and it has a 100 per cent trustworthy and good security, however work on it isn’t carried out.”

A civil society activist, Dr. Abdul Hadi Hamas, said once work on the dam was launched in President Mohammad Daud Khan’s era, but still despite promises the project remained incomplete.

“If this dam is constructed, it will bring under irrigation thousands of hectares of land besides producing power and paving the way for entrepreneurship here.”

The participants of the gathering also demanded construction of the dam as they believed it would help improve people’s economy and give a boost to agriculture besides providing jobs to thousands of youth directly and indirectly.

Paktia water management department head, Mohammad Tahir Shafaq, cited procurement issue behind the project’s delay. “The President is viewing the logistic process and whenever the process is finished, work on the dam will be launched.”

The dam’s construction was handed over to a joint Afghan and foreign company by gormer President Hamid Karzai government.

Then water and energy minister Ismail Khan at the foundation stone laying ceremony of the dam had said that work on the dam would be finished in three years. Seven years had passed since but even one percent work on the project has not been carried out.

sns/ma 

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