KARACHI: The chairman of China-Pakistan Eco­nomic Corridor Authority (CPECA), Asim Saleem Bajwa on Wednesday said that 88 per cent of work on the Karot hydropower project had been completed.

The first of its kind project under the CPEC, being built on River Jhelum, is expected to be completed in April 2022, a dawn.com report quoted him as saying.

Sharing details of the Karot Hydropower Project through a tweet, Mr Bajwa said the investment in the project amounted to $1,780 million while 5,000 local people were directly employ­­ed for its construction.

The 720MW Karot hydropower project was due to be completed in 2020. It has the capability to generate 3.249 billion units of clean electricity per year for the national grid.

The project is being developed on the Build-Own-Operate and Transfer (Boot) basis at an estimated cost of $1.98bn including a development cost of $1.698bn and interest during construction of $243m by Karot Power Company Private Ltd, comprising M/s Three Gorges South Asia Investment Ltd and Associated Technologies (Pvt) Ltd of Pakistan.

The project is being constructed on a concrete gravity of 91 metres high dam with a crest length of 320 metres near the village of Gohra. The dam’s reservoir will be approximately 152m cubic metres in volume, with a length of 27 kilometres. Around 72 homes and 58 businesses were expected to be relocated due to the project while 2.8km of the Karot-Kotli road and 8.9km of the Azad Pattan-Kahuta road were also expected to be relocated.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2021