GILGIT, Jan 29: The minister for water and power, and Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas (Kana) chief executive, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, has inaugurated a telecommunication project in the area on Wednesday.

The development programme “Northern Areas Telecommunication Uplift Project” was launched by the Special Communication Organization (SCO) at a cost of Rs718 million in March 2000.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony, the minister eulogized the efforts of the SCO in developing, upgrading and modernizing the communication network in the rural areas.

Mr Sherpao assured the officials of the SCO that he would defend their projects at the executive committee of national economic council (ECNEC) and would direct the concerned departments to help out the organization’s communication expansion programmes.

The minister said that it was the second largest project in the region following the Karakoram Highway, and would benefit one million people of the Northern Areas.

Mr Sherpao visited the quake-affected areas of Astore valley and assured the people of all out help.

He announced to upgrade Astore to a full-fledged district and said that President Gen Pervez Musharraf would soon announce some important decisions about the region.

Earlier, briefing the minister, SCO director general Wahid A. Malik said that they would introduce cellular phones in Northern Areas.

He said that they had launched 17 wireless local loop stations at 13 localities to increase the communication facilities in the region.

Mr Malik said that the SCO had recently installed Damsat, which helped the organization increase the exiting 60 channels to 120.

He said they had provided 90,000 digital lines, 2,050 WLL lines and internet besides installing 200 telephone exchanges since its inception in 1976.

He hoped that by June next, the SCO would provide 18,000 additional lines to increase the communication density in the region.

He said that they had started work on the second phase of the communication uplift project and would expand the bandwidth in Northern Areas.