Insensitive and ill-considered comments by PPP GBLA speaker Wazir Baig
The Pamir Times points out some shockingly insensitive remarks made by GBLA member Wazir Baig of PPP about the possibility of using the opportunity of the temporary lake and converting it into a permanent reservoir. Wazir Baig should realize that building dams that have the possibility of displacing a large number of people (in this case, his own constituents!) is not something that should be discussed so flippantly as simply a cost-benefit analysis, especially at a time like now when people are being evacuated from their homes and already in a state of extreme unhappiness at the responsiveness of the federal government and newly formed local government to this building natural disaster
Source Pamir Times:
The people of Gojal valley had done enough to deserve this. They voted for Wazir Baig, overwhelmingly, and enabled PPP to win the assembly seat from LA – 6, Hunza. Speaker Baig is paying back in kind to the people of Gojal for their unconditional support.
“Had the mountains of Attabad-Hunza been made of solid rocks, the possibility of turning the dam into a permanent water reservoir could have been considered”, the speaker has reportedly told the Express Tribune.
“Building a dam requires billions of rupees and in this case the amount required for the rehabilitation of the displaced people is much less than that”, the old owl has his calculations done.
An elected representative of the people of Hunza, or as many put it, Gojal, Wazir Baig has shown no respect for the for natives of his electoral constituency. He feels sorry for missing the opportunity to convert a large portion of Gojal into a dam, to serve the country of which he can’t claim to be a legal citizen!
The people of Gojal shall feel sorry, if they are not feeling already, for electing a man who is ready to put their land, identity, culture and heritage at stake, to please his master sitting in Islamabad.
While Wazir Baig, despite of being head of the legislative in GB, has failed to give Gojal a hospital, or a few doctors, he still foolishly thinks to be possessing the moral authority to determine the fate of this region.
If Wazir Baig still wants to have the moral authority of representing Gojal – Hunza, he shall publicly apologize for making such ill intentioned, non-considerate and naive remarks. [AMN]
Wazir Baig is a non-sense.
Perhaps he has taken this brilliant idea from another brilliant mind, Orya Maqbool Jan (aka Taliban Meri Jan) who reportedly was the first one to coin this idea in a TV programme of Samaa TV.
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Hunza River crisis in Gigit Baltistan may be an opportunity as well. As Orya Maqbool Jan put, in Samaa’s program that the lake in Ata Abad may be tuned into a dam and once we build power houses there, this crisis will become an opportunity.
http://groups.google.com/group/PressPakistan/browse_thread/thread/083875964337f585/bf5116b554ff57ed?#bf5116b554ff57ed
Here is how another posted responded to the idea:
Orya Jan Maqbool is absolutely wrong. This Hunza lake can not be converted into a Dam. The studies on the matter has been completed and are available. Ultimately it is river passage and no possibility for Dam.
regards
Mateen Haider
Dawn News