The Tarbela dam stands like a wall in the middle of the Indus river — 470 feet high and 9,000 feet long. Seen from a distance, it can be mistaken for the horizon. In the towns of Swabi district, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the dam is the cause of both employment and hardship, depending on who you ask. Nearby, there is a housing project where thousands of engineers and workmen live in the Tarbela housing community. A few miles away live villagers who were displaced when the dam was first built. Despite a nearly $500 million resettlement package allocated for those affected by the original dam project, many have not been compensated.

For the federal government, the dam remains an untapped energy reservoir, promising to fulfil the needs of a growing and under-supplied nation. A great push has begun, under the auspices of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), to generate more power from strategic sites such as the Tarbela and Mangla dams, the latter built on the Jhelum. Financed primarily by the World Bank and to a lesser extent by the Water and Power Development Authority, the contract for the dam extension was awarded to the Chinese company Sinohydro. The project began in 2013 and was originally due to be completed in February 2018.

In the back of an unassuming shopping complex in Ghazi Town, some 30-minute drive south of the Tarbela dam, is the office of the Awami Labour Union. In a small office strewn with paperwork and wicker chairs that always appear to be occupied by workers, union general secretary Aslam Adil compiles complaints against Sinohydro. Adil tells me that his workers are underpaid, overworked, and forced into situations compromising their health and safety. An accident at the site that claimed at least four lives on July 3 has drawn some media attention to these charges. Now Adil is pushing the safety case at the World Bank, and trying to prove that the site does not meet the minimum standards required for acquiring funding.

“We don’t get basic safety equipment,” says a witness of the July 3 accident. “Even the work boots they provide are substandard and fall apart after a week or so. We are told to wear them until they get new ones, and that may take months.” The union is concerned about the way its members are treated at the construction site. It contends that most accidents go unreported and that Sinohydro does not provide the union data on accidents.

“They are supposed to give us a list of accidents but we do not get this information from them,” says Adil. Union president Ashfaq Ahmed adds: “All the safety issues at the dam are related to an accelerated work pace and the workers who get injured are not compensated.”

Sinohydro has attributed the accident to human error but witnesses are clear that the incident could have been prevented if work was not always carried out at such a hurried pace. “The concrete machinery there had been running since morning,” says a witness. “So more and more weight was being placed on the shuttering and it began to give in. Even if the machinery had been turned off for a while, the concrete would have settled and this could have been avoided.”

Another worker, who was badly injured during the incident and was a close friend of one of the dead, says: “They make us do the work as quickly as possible. We aren’t even allowed to stop and take a breath.”

“The Nawaz Sharif government has made an agreement with the Chinese company that it will give them a large bonus if they can complete the project by June 2017,” says Adil. “This has been done so the work can be completed before the elections in 2018.” The Wapda website confirms this accelerated completion date.

“The greatest tragedy is that after the accident, the government awarded compensation to the families of the Chinese workers who died, but did not even mention the Pakistani fatalities,” adds Adil. Shahid Raza and Qadeer Hussain were the two Pakistani labourers who died that day and union representatives feel that more lives will be ruined if changes are not made.

In Swabi, there is a specific chador commonly worn by women. It is white with red dots, some large, others small. They look like polka dots and could be mistaken for a local fashion statement. But there is a story that goes with this piece of clothing that verges on the macabre. The red dots are said to be bloodstains honouring the martyrs of a battle fought between warring tribes. Another story links it to a historic ‘honour’ killing. Accounts on what exactly the chador commemorates, or even the date, appear to be unknown but everyone seems to agree that the dots signify spilled blood.

At the Hund museum in Swabi, among artefacts depicting the Gandhara civilisation, Alexander the Great’s crossing of the Indus, and Mughal-era remains, there is an un-curated piece of living history: a wax figure of a woman bent over a mortar and pestle, wearing this chador. Even today, though, many women of the area fear that their men’s blood may needlessly be spilt.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2016