China on Thursday said that work on Dasu Hydropower Project in Pakistan had resumed. The confirmation comes days after Islamabad decided to compensate the victims of a terror attack on the dam last July in which 10 Chinese nationals died while 28 others were injured.
“The Dasu Hydropower Project in Pakistan has resumed work,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, according to Chinese daily Global Times. A bus carrying Chinese workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had come under attack on July 14, 2021.
The Chinese workers and accompanying Pakistani staff were proceeding to their workplace for an ongoing project when the incident took place. Four Pakistani nationals had also lost their lives in the attack.
Pakistan earlier this week decided to compensate the 36 Chinese nationals, who died and were injured in a terrorist attack, to removing a major irritant in bilateral relations. The government worked out four different compensation amounts ranging from $4.6 million (Rs810 million) to $20.3 million (Rs3.6 billion), according to reports. Pakistan decided to make the payment despite the fact that there was no legal or contractual obligation on the government.
After the government tried to downplay the terrorist attack as an accident caused by gas leakage, China immediately retaliated and cancelled a scheduled meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The Chinese contractor had also stopped the work on the project and demanded a compensation of $37 million.
The compensation that the contractor had claimed was over 500% more than what a Chinese national’s heirs would have received if killed in a similar attack in their own country, according to a report. The 4,320MW Dasu Hydropower Project is being constructed by China Gezhouba with funding from the World Bank. The project is funded by the World Bank and does not fall in the scope of the CPEC.
Beijing had asked Pakistan to thoroughly investigate the incident, and arrest the perpetrators to protect the Chinese personnel and projects, according to the state-run Global Times newspaper.
