Chinese company suspends hydro project after deadly attack in Pakistan, fires hundreds of employees

Two days after five Chinese citizens were killed in a suicide attack on a hydropower project in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Chinese company has suspended civil works at another hydropower project in the same restive province and hundreds of people were evacuated, according to media reports. The workers have been fired. Thursday.

At least five Chinese nationals working on the Dasu hydropower project were among six people killed on Tuesday when a vehicle packed with explosives hit their bus in Bisham district, the second attack on workers working on a China-backed hydropower project. It was a suicide attack. Project from 2021. No terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing.

Chinese company, Power Construction Corporation of China (PCCC) has suspended civil works at the Tarbela 5th Extension Hydropower Project in Swabi district of KP province and evacuated over 2,000 workers following the killing of Chinese nationals in a suicide attack in Shangla district. Have given. Dawn newspaper has given this news quoting government sources.

The suspension of work on the 1,530 MW Tarbela Expansion Project (T5) was informed by the Manager (Administration), PCCC. The notification also revealed that the project’s site workers and office staff members have been quarantined until further orders due to security reasons, the report said. It has also laid off 2,000 employees due to ‘security reasons’. However, the manager said that only employees called by their respective section heads would report to work.

Aslam Adil, general secretary of the Awami Labor Union in the Tarbela project, confirmed the development, but stressed that under labor laws, laid-off workers have not lost jobs and are entitled to their wages until they are rehired. Entitled to half share. “Officials are going to increase the safety of project workers on their demand,” he said. The union leader said the suspension of work would not cause a “prolonged delay” in the completion of T-5, which is being financed by the World Bank (US$390 million). Dollar) and with the assistance of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (US$300 million) is scheduled to be completed by May 2026. million).

The Chinese were working on the Dasu hydroelectric project, which is about 300 km north of Islamabad. The 4,320 MW project is being constructed by China Gezhouba with funding from the World Bank. The first such attack involving Chinese nationals was carried out on July 14, 2021, a few kilometers from the Dasu dam site in Kohistan, in which nine Chinese engineers and four Pakistani workers were killed, while more than 23 were injured.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday called for a thorough joint investigation into the deadly terrorist attack on Chinese citizens after Beijing pressed Islamabad to speed up the search for the culprits and take effective steps to protect Chinese personnel working in the country. Ordered. Thousands of Chinese workers are working on several projects in Pakistan under the auspices of the US$60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – PTI)