ISLAMABAD: Chinese and Pakistani workers together carrying construction materials like steel beams seems to be the most natural scene at the construction site of Karot Hydropower Plant, a major pilot project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Though less educated, the builders of the two countries have found their way to overcome the language barriers. “I do not know much about English or the local workers’ language. Sometimes we use Chinese, English and their language in only one sentence. After working together for a long time, that is enough for us to understand each other,” said Chen Bo, a 48-year-old Chinese construction worker who has been working at the plant for nearly one year. With about 70 percent of the overall construction completed, the 720-megawatt hydropower plant, located some 70 km east of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, is expected to be put into commercial operation by the end of 2021, according to Karot Power Company, a subsidiary of China Three Gorges South Asia Investment Ltd responsible for executing the project. Once it gets functional, the CPEC project will annually generate some 3.2 billion units of clean electricity, meeting the electricity demand of around 5 million local people and optimizing the energy consumption structure in the country, Li Zhili, deputy general manager of Karot Power Company said. To finish the plant building as soon as possible and solve the power supply bottleneck in Pakistan, the Chinese and Pakistani workers have learned professional skills from each other. Talking to media, the 25-year-old Pakistani worker Mohammad Awais who joined the project around two years ago, said the workers of the two countries lived and worked at the plant like a family and he had learned a lot from the Chinese workers. “They are hard-working workers and very punctual. The things that we didn’t know, we got to learn from them,” Awais said, adding that he has learned load management, load lifting and strictly following the safety rules from his Chinese partners. – Agencies
