Faheem Akhtar
Gilgit: The provincial government Gilgit Baltistan has deleted a 2-megawatt project from the Annual Development Program to establish a Green Energy Fund in Gilgit-Baltistan. It has approved the deletion of the Rs 780 million project and transferring it to the Green Energy Fund. While money from the Climate Fund will also be transferred to the Green Energy Fund. The Gilgit-Baltistan cabinet has approved the establishment of the Green Energy Fund in the last cabinet meeting. The Water and Power Department briefed the cabinet regarding green energy that it is essential to establish a Green Energy Fund to attract private investment in Gilgit-Baltistan, especially international investors, so that the electricity crisis in Gilgit-Baltistan can be overcome. In the cabinet meeting, the concerned department has also informed the government that power supply is a big problem in Gilgit-Baltistan during winters because of low temperature, the flow of water in the water streams decreases completely, due to which it is not possible to supply water to the hydropower houses, due to which people especially in Gilgit, Skardu and Hunza have to face load shedding for up to 22 hours. According to the department’s briefing, the power situation in Astore is better, so the unapproved 2 MW hydropower project worth Rs 780 million should be replaced and its money should be transferred to the Green Energy Fund. On the other hand, it has also been decided that the money deducted as a climate fund from the annual development program projects will also be transferred to the Green Energy Fund to top it up, however, the climate fund will be kept on a rotation basis. It should be noted that the Climate Fund was approved during the previous government’s tenure, 2015 to 2020, according to which one percent of all development projects in Gilgit-Baltistan were to be given to the Climate Fund, but no official report has been released yet regarding its use.
