Some officials on Thursday said work on Dahandara Dam in northwestern Faryab province has resumed, but others disputed the claim as deceptive.
According to a Pajhwok Afghan News report, work on Dahandara irrigation dam in Pashtonkot district of Faryab was started on November 22, 2017 and it was expected to complete in five years.
Officials of the Ministry of Water and Energy at the time had said that the dam was the country’s fifth biggest with 67 meters height and could store more than 20 million square meters of water
Estimated to cost $37 million from government budget, the dam is designed to irrigate about 4,000 hectares of farmland and generate one and half megawatt of electricity.
However, another Pajhwok report published on December 26, 2019, shows that only two percent work on the dam could be completed in three years while more than one hundred security forces guarding the facility have been killed and wounded.
After the report published, work on the dam was resumed two months ago and a Pajhwok Afghan News correspondent on March 3 traveled to the area for preparing this report.
Some local officials told the correspondent said that work on the project was going very slow and still many problems plagued the process.
Sayed Zainuddin Abidi, a civil society activist in Faryab, said, “After our advocacy and a Pajhwok report, work on Dahandara Dam is apparently started after a long delay, but the work is not convincing,” he said.
He said work on the project should be objective, not deceptive, by bringing some vehicles around the dam.
“The contracted company, government officials and observers should act in coordination and honestly, otherwise the public would take action and would implement it by any means as they know the dam’s importance”, he said.
Naqibullah Fayeq, Faryab governor, told Pajhwok that the company responsible for the implementation of the dam project invited him to visit construction process of the dam 20 days ago.
“But I was informed that the company is trying deceive the public and the government by making symbolic moves, I refused to visit the dam,” he said.
“No effective work has been done in the dam, contractors pulled millions of dollars from the government’s account; but they leased some vehicles and machineries against $200,000 from a local company, their activities are dramatic and want to cheat the public and the government,” he added.
Fayeq said that he would soon report to the president and the Ministry of Finance and ask them to assess the work done by the company and the money it took from the government.
He said he would also ask them to press the company to take practical steps for implementation of the project.
Firoz Dahandara, commander of the protection unit for the dam and Mirwais Sayedzoi, chief of Pashtonkot district said that work on the dam resumed after Pajhwok published a report about it.
However, Eng. Wakil Naslian, manager of the dam project from the company, said that work on the dam was started two months ago and they were committed to completing the project.
About the delay in construction of the dam, he said, “There were many problems such as planning, axis and design areas of the dam when we first started work on the project in November 2017, we suggested a new axis to the ministry, the planning of the new axis took six months and we started work months ago.”
Eng. Abdul Qayum Badari, representative of the Ministry of Water and Energy for the project, said that Dahandaar Dam was the fifth biggest dam of the country and it would be completed on schedule.
He mentioned two problems — acquisition of people’s land and planning and design — which delayed the project. He said work on the design of the project had been 70 percent completed.
