Background:
WAPDA is one of the key financial partners of GWP Pakistan, is a government-owned public utility, maintaining power and water in Pakistan. WAPDA has been nominated by the Government of Pakistan as the focal organisation to address National Water Emergency to assist provinces to develop their water resources under the National Water Policy. As a long-standing partner, GWP Pakistan joined hands with WAPDA to build WAPDA’s capacity to meet the expectations of the Government of Pakistan for undertaking this vital assignment. After having being discussed the gaps and the needs of WAPDA, GWP Pakistan, under the Water and Climate Resilience Programme (WACREP) of GWP South Asia, organised the Training of Trainers (ToT) on capacity building on preparation of master plans for water storage and hydropower development.
The training:
The topics discussed at the training were on the disciplines of water resources management, including hydropower development, flood and drought mitigation under climate change impacts, glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) mitigation, sustainable management of groundwater, reclamation of waterlogged areas and management of salinity in the Indus Basin. Also discussed about the specific water needs in Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and in Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
It is expected that the training would build WAPDA’s capacity to conduct future projects on water storage and hydropower development aligned with the National Water Policy. The participants were trained on,
- Planning, investigation, hydrological data analysis, project formulation and presentation to the government.
- Prepare robust financial models for executing the above projects.
- Preparing training modules for capacity building of WAPDA’s engineers
Experts from WAPDA conducted presentations on master plans for water storage and hydropower development. These master plans have been further split into short, mid and long-term plans and further, storage has been discussed with a provision of having additional 10 million-acre feet (MAF) storage capacity as is has been prioritised at the National Water Policy. The master plan will initially spread over a period of 50 years and would continue even beyond.
More than 60 senior managers representing public sector participated the ToT. It is expected, more than 1,000 professionals from various technical disciplines to be trained by these senior managers during their academic level trainings and on-the-job trainings.
Photo 2: Mr Sardar Muhammad Tariq, CEO, GWP Pakistan and Lieutenant General Muzammil Hussain (Retd), Chairman, WAPDA have jointly chaired the workshop.