KALAM, Aug 31: Hundreds of residents of Bayun village located near Kalam in upper Swat started hugging and congratulating each others on seeing electricity lights operational for the first time in their lives in the snow-bound mountainous village on a foggy and cold evening of Thursday last.

Children of the village, who were not allowed by their elders to come near the spot where the Bayun Micro Hydropower Project (Bayun MHP) was being inaugurated, were standing in groups outside their houses, cheering and clapping to celebrate when power supply was given to streetlights.

A large number of elders and youngsters, wearing sweaters and shawls, were standing on both sides of a narrow dirt track leading to the inauguration venue to welcome guests to their village for inauguration of the newly-established power unit. Joy and pleasure could be read on their faces for having the facility, which their fellow countrymen have for decades.

Bayun village is located on the hilltop, some three kilometers away in the east of Kalam valley. The Bayun MHP having capacity of 100 KV has been established with the joint efforts of Sarhad Rural Support Programme, an NGO, and local people.

SRSP regional program manager, Swat, Zahid Khan told Dawn that the power unit had been established at a cost of Rs9.8 million in nine months to provide electricity to Bayun village, which had a population of 4,600.

Of the total cost, Rs6.2 million has been contributed by the SRSP and Rs3.6 by the local community, he said. The local people contributed Rs 0.5 million in cash, and the rest in kind of labour, woods, stones, sand etc to the project.  Compared to electricity prices in rest of the country, the power produced by Bayun project would be cheaper, Mr Khan said and added: “Only Rs3.5 per unit will be charged from consumers here that would be spent on operation of the power unit.”

The project would be operated jointly by the SRSP and local people for two years and after that it would be handed over to the villagers, he said. The installation of power meters and cables from electricity poles to houses is the responsibility of residents.

Half of the population has completed wire fitting in their houses, but electricity has not been provided to them till now, he said, adding only streetlights had been made operational as a test case.

Mr Khan said that a mechanism would be developed for operation of the system and initially a metre reader, operator and lineman would be recruited from the community and they would be given salaries from the amount collected in electricity bills.

He said that any extra amount earned would be spent on other development activities in the area.

A documentary about how the project was completed was also screened to the visitors showing the villagers carrying transformers mounted on wooden logs and installing electricity poles on top of the high mountains, as transportation of crane and other machineries are not possible to the village.

Officials of the SRSP praised Bayun villagers for their support in implementation of the project.

Standing with other villagers, Said Rehman, 14, told Dawn that with the electricity in his village, he was happy and feeling some change in his life. Asked how he used to study at night, his response was abrupt “we cannot read after sunset”