WAPDA on Thursday signed an agreement worth Rs 611.50 million as a joint venture to prepare the detailed engineering design and tender documents of the Munda Dam Multipurpose Project at Governor’s House. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Barrister Masood Kausar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Karamatullah Khan, FATA parliamentarians, tribal elders and others also attended the event. The joint venture includes Pakistani, Australian and Japanese firms to complete the task in two years. Briefing the participants on salient feature of the Munda Dam Project, it was told that the dam was proposed to be constructed on the Swat River around five kilometres upstream of Munda Head Works in Mohmand Agency. The project on completion would mitigate floods, develop irrigated agriculture and generate hydro power with installed capacity of 740MW to add around 2,407 million units of energy annually to total energy production. It was told that Munda Dam was a priority project in wake of floods, which played havoc in the country, particularly Charsadda and Nowshera. After completion of the detailed engineering design in two years, the Munda Dam Project will enter into the construction phase, estimated to cost $1.4 billion and completed in seven years. The project will store 1.29 million acre feet water and 300 million cubic metre floods of the River Swat, restricting accumulation of its peak flows with that of River Kabul. Annual benefits of the project were calculated at Rs 20.2 billion. AFD of France had shown interest to provide financial assistance for the design and construction phase of the project.
