NDMA to drain the lake by mid-August

Affectees to march to Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly

GILGIT: The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has in principle decided to make yet another attempt to drain the landslide lake by mid-August, sources said on Tuesday.

The move comes after Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Mehdi Shah endorsed the NDMA proposal of exploding the spillway. In June, authorities had used dynamite on several boulders in the spillway in an attempt to drain out the 23-kilometre-long lake, but it didn’t work. If the lake is drained, more than 25,000 displaced persons, living in government camps, will be able to return to home.

In Hunza, desperate villagers are mounting pressure on the government to settle the issue as soon as possible. On Tuesday, the victims of Attabad threatened to lay siege to the Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly’s building in Gilgit after authorities turned a blind eye to their protests.

“We are running out of time, we want to go back to our houses. As a last resort, we have decided to surround the assembly building until our demands are met,” a victim said.

According to a report by the damage assessment committee of the government, the actual loss caused by the landslide was Rs780 million, but the compensation package being offered to the affectees is Rs0.6 million per family. The affectees have refused the package but Shah has held to his guns, claiming that they are being offered more than what was given to the Swat IDPs.

Meanwhile, officials in Hunza said that the lake’s outflow had increased but not as much as they were expecting.

Published in the Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2010.