PESHAWAR, Jan 16: To ensure smooth supply of electricity to the remote parts of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas some 100 small hydel power units will be installed where Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) cannot extend its network, official sources told Dawn on Thursday.

The government had asked the Pakistan Council of Renewable Energy Technologies (PCRET), a subsidiary of the federal ministry for science and technology, to undertake the installation of small power units in those parts of the tribal areas where it would be difficult for Wapda to extend its distribution network, they added.

The newly established NWFP Governor’s Fata Secretariat had also earmarked a sum of Rs15 million in its current financial year’s development budget to install 100 small hydel power units in the inaccessible parts of tribal agencies, bordering Afghanistan, they informed.

However, in spite of having specified funds in the current financial year’s development plan the government, said the sources, was exploring other options to raise funds from some of the international donor agencies for executing the project.

The Peshawar-based deputy director of the PCRET, Noor Akbar, said that the PC-1 of the project had been approved and the council’s technical staff was about to commence sites’ identification survey in the hilly areas of the tribal belt and feasibility report to execute the project before June, next.

He said that the defunct Fata Development Corporation had already conducted survey in the highlands of Kurram, Khyber, North and South Waziristan, Orakzai, Mohmand and Bajaur agencies and recommended installation of small hydel power units in some areas.

An official of the Governor’s Fata Secretariat, when contacted told this reporter that the project had been temporarily deferred because of the government’s efforts to raise funds from the donor agencies.

He said that the secretariat would seek funds for natural resource management schemes including the small hydel power units and community infrastructure projects in Fata from a team of World Bank officials, which would shortly visit the provincial metropolis.

If it (WB) did not finance the project, then the government would provide funds from its own resources, projected in the annual ADP for Fata.

The WB team will visit Peshawar and tribal areas within the next couple of days to discuss the possibility of financing natural resource management projects in tribal areas and Provincially-Administered Tribal Areas (Pata).

The small hydel power unit, manufactured in Taxila is meant to provide electricity to the far flung areas and encourage income generating activities including cottage industry in Fata.

Officials believed that the small hydel power was one of the cheapest sources of energy in Pakistan and across the world and the PCRET had been engaged in power generation activities in Malakand, Chitral, Northern Areas, Kashmir and other parts of the country and installed 270 units in NWFP and Northern Areas for the last three decades.

Many organizations like Agha Khan Rural Support Programme, United Nations Development Programme and Malakand Rural Development Programme were installing 5 to 50 KWs hydel units in the inaccessible mountainous areas of the country with the support of the local communities.